


Echoing Green

by thegatheringdust



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Enemies to Lovers, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Potions, Romance, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2019-10-26 16:29:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17749412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegatheringdust/pseuds/thegatheringdust
Summary: Back at Hogwarts for his eighth year, Draco is offered the opportunity of a lifetime: the chance to enter a prestigious potions competition and maybe salvage his future. The only catch? He has to work with Potter.After everything they’ve been through, asking for Potter’s help seems like Draco’s worst nightmare. But as they struggle to heal old wounds, Draco begins to question everything he thought he knew about himself and about the boy who won’t stop staring at him with those terrible green eyes.





	1. A Change of Colour

“If you’re not going to eat it, Draco, just leave it alone!” 

Draco glanced up just as Pansy snatched his fork away, looking exasperated.

“Oi! I was using that!” he insisted, although it was possible that he and Pansy had different ideas of what “using” meant. True, he hadn’t taken a single bite of the pie on his plate, but he _had_ been using his fork to slowly pick it apart into smaller and smaller pieces until it resembled little more than a crumbled mess. In his opinion, this counted as an entirely valid use, but it seemed Pansy thought otherwise. 

Robbed of the ability to further pulverize his food, Draco shoved his plate away, appetite long gone. “It’s rude to take someone’s things without asking, you know.” 

Pansy rolled her eyes, tossing the fork aside with a clatter. “You hardly ate anything,” she said, eyeing his discarded pie. “And you look…” She glanced him over critically, one eyebrow arched. “Thin." 

Draco's chin jutted forward. "It’s not my fault this school has such atrocious food," he defended.

Pansy sighed. They both knew the food was not the issue, but at that moment, Blaise leaned across the table to ask her something, saving Draco from further scrutiny. Uninterested in whatever banal topic his friends had launched into discussing, Draco let his gaze wander.

Whoever had been charged with the reconstruction had done a good job. Draco’s last memory of Hogwarts was of crashing stones, spilled blood, and copious amounts of smoke. But from the first moment Draco had stepped into the Entrance Hall earlier that evening, it was almost as if nothing had changed. Pansy had held his hand and her shrieking giggle had echoed off the stone walls as Blaise and Goyle argued about Quidditch, and for a few moments, Draco had dared to think that maybe it really could be just another year at Hogwarts. 

But that feeling hadn’t lasted long. The snide remarks he had ignored on the train began to pick up in both quantity and volume somewhere around the Great Hall. He couldn’t decide what was worse: the blatant shouts from the other tables or the bitter whispers from his fellow Slytherins. Hated by some for his allegiance in the war, despised by others for not being loyal enough, and always, always criticized for his lenient sentencing—there was no direction to turn that didn’t meet with hostile loathing. It was enough to turn anyone off their food, really.

Granted, Draco hadn’t had much of an appetite for many weeks now, but at least tonight he could claim an excuse. 

“Draco.” Pansy’s voice was suddenly very close to his ear, her fuchsia nails pressing into his wrist. “Potter is _staring_ at you.” 

Draco’s head turned so sharply he felt his neck crack. His gaze roamed wildly for a moment, skimming over the tables of chattering students until it landed on the tousled black hair of the boy in question. Though he was all the way across the room and half hidden behind the bushy-haired Granger girl and the redhead beside her, Draco knew Pansy was right. Potter was indeed staring at him, the unnatural green of his eyes apparent even from this distance. 

“What does he _want_?” Pansy hissed, nose wrinkled in dislike. Her nails were digging unpleasantly into his skin. 

Draco extracted himself from her too-tight grip, not bothering to answer what he could only assume was a rhetorical question. How in Merlin’s name was he supposed to know what Potter wanted? 

Refusing to back down from Potter’s aggressive observation, he stared back stubbornly across the hall. He would not cower, not to the likes of Potter. But as the seconds dragged by, Draco grew more and more unnerved. Why wasn’t Potter turning away? He had suffered many unpleasant looks that evening, but for reasons Draco could not explain, Potter’s gaze made his stomach twist more than any other. 

Fortunately, Draco did not have to endure it for long. As Professor McGonagall—now Headmistress McGonagall—stood to give the customary start of term speech, Potter’s attention shifted towards the staff table. 

Draco let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. McGonagall had started speaking, but it took Draco another long moment before he could focus on what she was saying. That infuriating green stare had gotten under his skin, a particular talent of Potter’s. 

“Due to the exigent circumstances of the last year, we have had to make some adjustments to our classes,” McGonagall was explaining. “Exigent circumstances” was a nice way of putting it; they had hardly received any real education last year under the brutal tutelage of the Carrows, and the battle that destroyed the castle had also cancelled all end-of-year exams. 

“I would like to express my deepest gratitude to our sixth years in particular for their flexibility and determination. I know you all studied very hard over the summer in order to take your O.W.L. exams before the beginning of term, and I was very pleased with all of your results.” 

This announcement was met with a chorus of triumphant shouts from the sixth years and a smattering of general applause across the room. McGonagall’s soft smile as she looked out at the students over her spectacles reminded Draco forcibly of Dumbledore, and he found he had to clench his hands together in his lap to keep them from shaking.

“I am also happy to welcome back those students who have returned for an eighth year in order to complete their N.E.W.T.s.” 

McGonagall paused, anticipating the cheers that arose. Draco knew better than to think the enthusiasm extended to him. Nearly everyone had turned to look towards the Gryffindor table, and shouts of “Harry! Harry!” rang across the hall.

Draco made a noise of disgust. The beloved Saviour was red in the face and ducking his head, but Draco knew he was lapping it up. Potter thrived on being the centre of attention. 

“That’s enough now,” McGonagall silenced, although she was still smiling. “I trust that _all_ of our returning students will be treated most graciously.” 

As if the implication weren’t obvious enough, McGonagall shot a glance in the direction of the Slytherins. Draco wished she would just let it be. No amount of conciliatory speeches would make the students cheer his return. 

“We are very fortunate that, for the most part, we have been able to restore the school to its former condition in time for the start of term, and I am sure you are all excited to be back and ready for your classes tomorrow morning, so I shall send you off to get a good night’s rest,” McGonagall finished. “Eighth years, if you will please stay behind.” 

Benches scraped against the stone floors as students rose to leave. Draco and his friends stayed seated, as did the other eighth years. McGonagall waited until the last of the younger students had filed out of the Great Hall before she swept between the tables and gestured them all over to the doors. 

They grouped around her in a loose semicircle, numbering about two dozen in total. Draco stood as far away from Potter as possible.

“I’m sure you are all wondering where you will be staying,” she began. “Since an eighth year class is unprecedented, and you are all now adults, we have decided to assign you your own common room.” 

Several students murmured in surprise. Draco glanced over at Pansy, who wiggled her eyebrows.

“You have been assigned dormitories with your same housemates, but you all will have a shared common space, which I will show you to now.” 

They followed McGonagall up the stairs, breaking immediately into whispered conversation. Whether the other students were more excited or apprehensive, Draco could not tell. Once they had reached the third floor, McGonagall guided them to a large wooden door flanked by the oversized stone bust of a very old square-jawed wizard. 

“Billywig,” McGonagall said to the bust, which nodded its head once and the door swung inwards. 

After passing through a short corridor, they found themselves in a spacious, warmly lit room furnished with an assortment of armchairs and one very large, plush sofa. The walls were lined with bookshelves, broken up only by a massive crackling fireplace. It was much cosier than the Slytherin common room, Draco thought, but they had obviously made an effort to not make it seem partial to any one house. The colours were mostly neutral, aside from a jumble of bright blue, green, red, and yellow pillows piled on the sofa and a large flag with the Hogwarts crest hung over the mantel. 

“Not bad, not bad!” Finnigan appraised, already making himself at home on sofa. As other students moved forward to explore the room, Draco stayed back, hands shoved deep in his pockets. 

“You will find your things already in your dormitories, which are down that hallway,” McGonagall gestured. “As you are all adults, you will be given a bit more leeway than you have been allowed in the past—a later curfew, and open leave to go to Hogsmeade. However,” she interrupted Thomas and Finnigan’s shouts of glee, “I expect that you will all conduct yourselves as _responsible_ adults, and if I hear that you are behaving otherwise, the consequences will not be so lenient.” On that note, McGonagall bade them all a goodnight. 

Some students headed towards their dorms while others broke off into groups, chatting and taking up places in the chairs around the room. Even Blaise and Pansy had quickly gone to claim seats by the fire with another Slytherin, Millicent Bulstrode, and were beckoning him over. Goyle, loyal bloke that he was, had stuck by Draco’s side without question, though he was beginning to edge towards the others, his eyes flickering uncertainly between them and Draco. No one else, it seemed, had any reservations about this new setup. No one except Draco. 

“Get over here, Draco!” Pansy called, gesturing imperiously at the open armchair next to hers. 

Potter, squashed between his many friends on the sofa, glanced around when he heard Draco’s name. Draco forced himself not to look over.

Instead, he shook his head at Pansy, muttered something dismissive to Goyle about wanting to rest, and turned his back on the room, heading down the hallway McGonagall had indicated earlier. It split off into two separate passageways, one labelled for men and another for women. Further along the corridor, Draco found the door draped in Slytherin green and quickly slammed it shut behind him, silencing the sounds of laughter and conversation that carried from the common room. 

Though it was not the same dormitory as his previous years at Hogwarts, it looked remarkably similar. The only difference was that there were three beds now instead of five, absent Theo Nott’s and Vincent Crabbe’s. The first, Draco did not miss. Theo’s father, unlike Draco’s, had been sentenced to life in Azkaban for his crimes. Either Theo didn’t dare to show his face or he didn’t care enough about his education to return to Hogwarts. In either case, it mattered little to Draco; they had never been close friends. But Crabbe… 

Draco’s chest constricted painfully as he looked at the space where his friend’s bed should have been. The room felt wrong without it. What was the point of making the new dormitories look familiar when everyone knew that nothing was the same? Ridiculous, really. 

Draco shifted his focus to his own bed, determined not to think on it any longer. He rifled through the stacks of neatly folded clothes in his trunk until he found his pyjamas. They were the black silk ones he always wore, his favourites. Yet for some reason, as he pulled them on and his gaze landed on the delicate emerald green trim, Draco felt a strange flicker of displeasure. 

That green… why did he suddenly detest that green?

That green was the colour of excellence, Draco reminded himself. It was Slytherin’s own colour, the colour of generations of Purebloods, which Draco had always been told made him special, almost like royalty. He should be proud of that colour. 

_But,_ the small, bitter voice in the back of his mind whispered, _where has your pure blood ever gotten you? Where has any of that ever gotten you?_

He thought then of another green, a truly abhorrent colour: the green of a pair of eyes behind rounded glasses, the same ones that had fixated on him from across the Great Hall. 

Draco fell back onto his four-poster, weighed down with the memories he had tried so hard to shut away. He could still see the courtroom in his mind, with its dark stone walls and looming benches. He could feel the chill, both the physical cold and the icy wave of hatred emanating from every person in the room as they looked down on him, sneering at the proud Malfoy family brought so low. 

Sitting in that courtroom, Draco had been sure that he would never see sunlight again. The sky had been clear and blue the day of the trial; he had soaked in every moment of it as they brought him from Azkaban, where they had kept all of the Death Eaters awaiting trial after the battle at Hogwarts. Those few blissful minutes of warmth, he had thought, would be his last. They would hear of his cruelty and his failures, they would see his cowardice, and they would throw him straight back to that tiny stone cell. It would have been no more than he deserved.

But then a miraculous thing had happened: Potter had appeared. He had defended Draco, spinning events from the previous year in such a way that Draco had almost wanted to speak up, to argue with him, because how could Draco ever deserve forgiveness? And yet that’s how Potter had made him seem—redeemable. 

Potter did not look at Draco once while giving his testimony. It was only after he had finished his wild story and gotten up to leave that he turned to face the person he had so ardently insisted was a victim, rather than a criminal. Potter’s eyes had never looked so vibrantly green as in that moment when he extended his hand, holding out Draco’s wand. 

The confusing rush of guilt and shame and gratitude that Draco had felt with that one gesture had been worse than all the hateful stares of the Wizengamot put together. Disgust and anger he could handle; he had many years of practice in those. But Draco could not bear what he saw in Potter’s eyes then, nor what he felt inside himself. 

Draco could still sense that green gaze all around him, watching his every move. The dormitory seemed designed to mock him. The tapestries draping the walls, the bed hangings, the pillows, even the carpets—it was all green. In the seven years he had been at Hogwarts, it had never bothered him. In fact, he had always quite liked the colour. His bedroom at the family manor in Wiltshire was a riot of green. But now, lying in his bed remembering that cold morning in the Ministry courtroom, the colour felt like an oppressive weight under which he could hardly breathe. Another moment and Draco thought he might go insane. 

He snatched his wand from the bedside table. One simple spell later and all the décor in the room had turned a muted shade of aubergine. The effect was quite ugly, but Draco sat back, satisfied. Aubergine he could live with. 

Grabbing his copy of _Ancient Elixirs of the Middle East_ from his dresser and wrapping himself in his newly purpled covers, Draco settled in for a long, sleepless night. He wasn’t foolish enough to believe that merely changing the colour of a few fabrics would be enough to keep the nightmares away, but at least now he could stop thinking about that bloody green-eyed git. 

 

~

 

By the time Draco’s tossing and turning had finally lulled into a fitful sleep, Blaise’s apathetic voice was telling him he had missed breakfast and was going to be late to class. 

Draco was out of bed in seconds, throwing on his clothes with uncharacteristic haste. Ignoring whatever question Blaise was in the middle of asking him, he snatched up his book bag and sprinted out the door, very nearly tripping when he reached the stairs. They had double Potions first period and Draco was accustomed to being much closer to the dungeons; he had forgotten that their new common room was on the third floor. 

By a combination of sheer luck and some desperate clutching at the banister, he managed to stay upright, barely regaining his footing before he was off again. He could hear Blaise’s footsteps pounding behind him but he didn’t bother to pause and let the other boy catch up. 

He finally skidded to a halt halfway down the stairs leading to the dungeons, panting as he took a moment to smooth his hair. Only once his breathing had settled did he continue towards the classroom. Blaise caught up with him as he reached the main dungeon corridor. 

“What the bloody hell was that?” he demanded, breathing hard.

“What do you mean?” A handful of other students were already in the corridor; they had managed to arrive a few minutes before the bell. “You’re the one who said we were going to be late!” 

“I didn’t say you had to make a race out of it!” 

“Well we got here on time, didn’t we?” Draco insisted, hoping the relief he felt wasn’t visible on his face. 

He could not afford to make any mistakes this year, that much had been made clear to him. Draco still didn’t know what or who had managed to convince the Board of Governors that he should be allowed to return to Hogwarts; he was sure that if some of them had their way he would never step foot in the school again. But in the end he had been granted permission to finish his education, albeit with the none-too-subtle warning that if he even stepped one toe out of line, it was all over for him. Being late to class might not have been exactly what they meant but Draco wasn’t about to test it. 

Fortunately, Blaise wasn’t the interrogative type, and neither Pansy nor Goyle had continued on to N.E.W.T.-level Potions, which meant Draco was saved from any further prying about his desperate sprint to class.

Trying his best to look supremely unperturbed, he cast a glance over at the knot of students standing a few yards away. He wasn’t looking for anyone in particular, of course; it was just a cursory look around. It was only by chance that his gaze immediately landed on Potter, who he was infuriated to realize was already watching him. _Those damn eyes…_

“What are you looking at, Potter?” he spat, leaping at the chance to try and discover why the messy-haired idiot couldn’t seem to leave him alone. “Not got enough attention already? Hoping I’ll bow at your feet, like everyone else?” His voice rang out through the stone hallway, drawing everyone’s attention. 

Potter’s expression betrayed only a moment of surprise before shifting into a maddening smirk. “I was only looking at your tie,” he replied coolly, nodding his head at Draco’s chest. “What happened, Malfoy? Slytherin not want you anymore? Did you have to create your own House?” 

Weasley’s barking laugh was not the only one to echo through the hall; even Granger appeared to be struggling not to smile. Draco had no idea what Potter was on about. In fact, he was sure that Potter was speaking complete nonsense until he heard Blaise’s quiet snicker beside him.

“I tried to tell you earlier,” Blaise said with a small shrug, his eyes sparkling with amusement. 

Now thoroughly confused, Draco glanced down at his necktie, expecting to see the customary green and silver stripes of the Slytherin uniform. Except, his tie was not green. It was purple, the exact shade that he had charmed half his room last night. He felt heat begin to rise in his cheeks. 

“What qualities does your new House value, Malfoy?” Weasley goaded. “Being a prat?” 

Draco wanted to wipe that shit-eating grin off his stupid freckled face. His wand was halfway drawn when he remembered that he was supposed to be staying out of trouble. Cursing Potter and his friends into oblivion would definitely count as stepping out of line. 

With some difficulty, Draco managed to suppress his surging anger, cornering it into a little box in the back of his mind along with the hideous sensation of embarrassment. When he spoke, all that remained was a kind of cold contempt. 

“Come now, Weasel, aren’t we all such good friends now, living together like one House? ” he sneered. “Green is just such a _dull_ colour.” 

He made a point of meeting Potter’s steady gaze; Potter didn’t flinch, but Draco knew he got the message. 

“I needed a change. Luckily, I look good in everything. It’s a shame you two will never know what that’s like.” 

Weasley seemed on the brink of a retort but was interrupted by the loud bang of the dungeon door hitting the wall. An irate-looking Slughorn appeared, his voice forcedly cheerful as he ushered his students inside. Apparently, everyone had been too focused on Draco and Potter’s confrontation to heed the bell signalling the start of class.

Draco threw himself down beside Blaise in a huff. Though he tried not to, he couldn’t help stealing a quick glance in Potter’s direction. The Gryffindor trio had their heads together at a table on the opposite side of the room, whispering and gesturing in a way that Draco was sure meant they were discussing him. 

He scowled and turned away, doing his best to pay attention as Slughorn described the dreadfully tricky process of brewing the Wolfsbane Potion. 

“Why _is_ your tie purple?” Blaise finally asked once Slughorn had settled behind his desk, leaving the class to follow the complex set of instructions written on the blackboard. “And more importantly, why is our entire bloody dormitory purple?” 

Blaise prodded at the flames beneath his cauldron with his wand until they reached the low, steady level that Draco had already achieved. 

“I just got tired of those same silly furnishings, it’s like we’re still first years,” Draco muttered, focused on the precise movement of his knife as he started dicing his aconite root. What else was he supposed to tell Blaise? That the green had reminded him too much of Potter’s eyes and he couldn’t stand it? It sounded mad even to Draco, and he was certain that Blaise would misunderstand. His friends liked to read too much into everything Draco did recently. 

“You’re just lucky the spell stuck to your own wardrobe,” Blaise said, changing Draco’s tie back to its proper colours with an indolent wave of his wand before pulling on his dragon hide gloves. Aconite, Slughorn had reminded them, was highly toxic and better not to handle directly. “That colour is revolting, it makes you look even more peaky than usual.” 

Draco directed a rude hand gesture his way. His potion had turned a dark blue colour with the addition of the aconite, indicating it was time to start adding the powdered moonstone with two counterclockwise stirs every thirty seconds.

It was only the beginning steps of an overwhelmingly finicky process, and though it was a double period, Blaise and Draco did not speak again for the rest of the class. Draco preferred it that way; focusing on the careful measurements and the soft sounds of bubbling soothed him as he worked, even as his classmates grew more and more visibly frustrated around him. 

When Slughorn finally came around to check on their progress, Draco was sticky with sweat and teary-eyed from the bitter fumes that filled the room, but he was satisfied. Slughorn’s approving nod only served to confirm what Draco already knew: his potion was flawless. The mist on the surface was a pale silver, perfectly primed to begin the ageing process. It was far better than Blaise’s potion with its dark grey vapours, and whoever’s potion had filled the room with a strange orange fog was so far off base that Draco would have failed them on their N.E.W.T. right then and there if it were up to him. 

He hoped it was Potter. 

“I’m very pleased that most have you have made such substantial progress,” Slughorn announced, circling back to the front of the room. “If brewed properly, your potions should age well over the next few days and be ready by our next meeting. If not…” 

He cast a pointed glance towards the sole Hufflepuff in the class, Macmillan, whose empty cauldron and sheepish expression suggested he was the source of the awful orange smog. Slughorn gave him a small, patronising smile. 

“Well, we shall see on Wednesday! Off you get to lunch then!” 

Draco shoved his things into his bag, halfway to the door when Slughorn’s voice called after him. 

“Mr. Malfoy, Mr. Potter, could I speak to you both for a moment?” 

Draco’s stomach dropped. Slughorn must have overheard them in the corridor before class. Draco fell back, grimacing in reply to Blaise’s curious expression as the other boy brushed past him out the door. A few feet away, Potter was waving a dismissive hand at his own friends, who seemed inclined to linger. 

“Go on, I’ll see you in the Great Hall,” he told them, looking far less concerned than Draco felt. 

Perhaps he was overreacting. It was hardly his fault that everyone had chosen to stay and watch their quarrel rather than heed the bell; they hadn’t even drawn their wands, after all, and even the insults had been rather tame in Draco’s opinion. Not to mention, if they were in trouble surely Slughorn would have asked Weasley to stay as well. 

Nevertheless, he approached Slughorn’s desk with apprehension, keeping his eyes fixed forward even as he felt Potter step up beside him, unpleasantly close to his side. 

“Sorry to keep you boys from your lunch,” Slughorn said, his chair groaning in protest as he sat. “This won’t take long. I only wanted to make you aware of an opportunity open to our N.E.W.T.-level students. I take it you both read _The Practical Potioneer_?” 

Draco responded, “Yes, of course, sir” at the exact same moment that Potter said, “Er, no.” 

Slughorn smiled. “ _The Practical Potioneer_ puts out a call for papers around this time every year for their Innovations in Potion-Making issue, and they always include an amateur section. It’s a competition of sorts, to encourage young potioneers.”

Draco nodded, sensing where this was headed. The anxiety twisting in his stomach eased, replaced by a cautious feeling of hope.

“I thought you two might be interested in submitting. It’s fairly competitive, I’ll tell you now, but you’re two of the brightest Potions students Hogwarts has, and I think you have a good chance.” 

Draco could not help himself. “What, _Potter_?” he scoffed, incredulous. Potter, if it were possible, looked even more shocked. 

“Me?” he asked dumbly. “Er… are you sure, sir? Hermione is much better at Potions than I am…” 

Draco nodded in agreement. Little though he liked the Muggle-born girl, no one could deny she was skilled. Not as good as Draco when it came to Potions, of course, but talented enough, and certainly more so than Potter.

“I’m quite sure, Harry,” Slughorn replied with a fond smile. “I think the two of you should work together. The theme this year is ‘recovery and reconstruction.’ The idea is to invent your own potion—something related to the theme, however you want to interpret it—and then you will submit a sample accompanied with a written explanation of the process and its effects and interactions and so forth,” he explained, one hand gesturing in time with his words as he spoke. “So, what do you think?” 

Of course Draco was interested. Being published in _The Practical Potioneer_ was the kind of honour he’d only ever dreamt of; obviously this was an opportunity he could not pass up. And yet...

“Together?” he asked, eyes flickering in Potter’s direction. That one little word was stuck in his mind, the only snag in an otherwise ideal situation. “Do we really have to work together?” 

Slughorn did not reply right away. He had an odd look on his face.

“Yes, Mr. Malfoy, I do believe you should,” he finally answered, voice firm. “As a precaution against irresponsible experimenting, you need a qualified sponsor in order to enter the competition. I am willing to help you put your names and project forward for consideration, but only if you both agree.” 

Draco pursed is lips, hazarding a glance to his left. Potter shifted uncomfortably on his feet. 

For Draco, the prospect of having his research included in one of the most prestigious academic publications in the wizarding world, of potentially having a potion of his own invention seen and evaluated and maybe even _praised_ by the brightest minds in potion-making was impossible to resist. Even if it meant having to put up with Potter as a partner, he could not let this chance slip through his fingers. But would Potter feel the same? 

The silence lasted a beat too long. Draco was the first to break it.

“I’ll do it.” 

Slughorn looked thrilled. “Wonderful!” He clapped his hands together. “And you, Harry, what do you say?” 

“Er…” Potter ran a distracted hand through his already untidy hair, making it stand on end. “I’m not sure, Professor. I don’t really know if I want to take on something like that. I’m just trying to get through my N.E.W.T.s.” 

Slughorn’s smile fell. The sinking feeling in Draco’s stomach returned.

“Yes, right, of course,” Slughorn conceded, his voice turning sympathetic. “Of course, you of all people deserve a break.” Potter kicked at the ground with the toe of his trainer. 

“Sorry, sir,” he mumbled. For the first time, he seemed intent on avoiding Draco’s gaze. 

“No worries, my dear boy, no worries at all! Well, then, I won’t keep you any longer, you both should get to lunch before your next classes begin.” 

“Right.” Potter hitched his bag higher up on shoulder, turning away. “Thanks, Professor.” 

Draco watched him hurry out the door, unmoving. He didn’t know what else he had expected, but he couldn’t help feeling a sharp stab of disappointment all the same. 

After a long moment, he turned back to face Slughorn. 

“Professor,” he began, his tone beseeching. “Can’t I enter on my own? Do I really need Potter?” 

Slughorn gave a small start. He had clearly thought that Draco had already left. 

“I thought it should be obvious, Mr. Malfoy.” Slughorn readjusted the quill in his hand having nearly dropped it in his surprise and reached for a stack of parchment. 

Draco had to work to keep the irritation from his tone. “What is, sir?” 

Slughorn sighed, setting the quill back down. “Mr. Malfoy,” he seemed to be choosing his words carefully, “Though you may have been cleared of all charges at your trial and granted significant clemency in your return to Hogwarts, I cannot pretend that any submission attached to your name alone would make it very far.” 

Draco closed his eyes, overcome with his own foolishness. For a moment, he had dared to forget who he was, and how everyone saw him. He had dared to believe that his skill and intelligence were all that mattered, had dared to hope that possibilities like these were still open to him. Slughorn was right; it was obvious, so painfully obvious that Draco hated himself for not seeing it. 

“You have a real talent for Potions, Mr. Malfoy,” Slughorn continued, looking at him with that same sad glimmer in his eyes. _Pity,_ Draco realized; it was pity in his face that Draco had seen earlier. 

“Professor Snape always insisted you were the best in your year, and I have to say I quite agree. I think you have what it takes to win this competition.” In that moment, the praise felt like a knife to Draco’s gut. “But, unfortunately, the judging isn’t blind. I thought that, perhaps, with Harry…”

He made a vague gesture, but Draco didn’t need to hear the end of that sentence. He had thought that Slughorn had only picked Potter because of his own reverential affection for the precious Boy Who Lived. Now, Draco realized Slughorn had hoped that with Harry Potter’s name attached, it might just be enough to cancel out the horrible weight of his own. 

“Mr. Potter, I should remind you, is a skilled potion-maker himself,” Slughorn added, as if reading Draco’s thoughts. “I do believe that together you could have created something great. But I will not force him into participating if he’s unwilling. I should hope you won’t either.” 

Draco swallowed hard, determined to keep his voice steady. “I understand, sir.” He turned away. “Thank you for trying.” 

Slughorn’s voice followed him with that same loathsome note of pity as he fled from the room.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Malfoy.”

Halfway to the Great Hall, Draco stopped, slumping to the floor with his back against the wall. He knew what he had to do now, although the thought made him nauseous. What other choice did he have?

He was going to have to ask Potter for a favour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rated Explicit for future chapters.
> 
> Title borrowed from William Blake's poem of the same name.


	2. The Favour

Draco spent the rest of lunch waiting just outside of the Great Hall, pacing as he tried to work out exactly what he wanted to say. He knew Potter had the next period free and Draco hoped to catch him alone for a moment before his own Advanced Arithmancy class. But when he finally spotted the familiar trio heading towards the stairs— _Merlin, did they really have to spend every minute together?_ —he had barely taken two steps before he was met with Weasley’s belligerent glare. Not keen on picking a fight and being late to class for a second time that day, Draco let them go.

He tried to focus through Arithmancy, which as a general rule was too demanding of a subject to allow for any distractions, but last period Charms was a different story. Potter was already sitting towards the front of the room with his friends by the time Draco arrived, which meant speaking before class was out of the question. Instead, Draco tuned out Flitwick’s review of combination nonverbal spells in favour of staring at the back of Potter’s head as if that black bird’s nest of hair might give him some insight. What was the best way to convince Potter to help him? Should he appeal to Potter’s saviour complex? Should he offer to help him study in return? Potter had said he wanted to focus on his N.E.W.T.s, and Merlin knew he wasn’t the bookish type. Would that be enough?

Or would Potter make him beg for it? 

If it weren’t for Pansy’s sharp elbow to his ribs just then, Draco would never have noticed that he was being asked a question. Everyone in the class had turned to look at him, watching silently as he scrambled to figure out what Flitwick had just said. Something about simultaneous Adhering and Colour Change Charms, maybe? 

He looked around. Each desk had a small pile of grey fabric on it; between the Professor’s expectant expression and Pansy’s not-so-subtle whisper, Draco was able to put it together. Charms was not his specialty, but he had a general affinity for nonverbal magic, so it couldn’t be too difficult. With a tiny nod of confirmation from Pansy, he flicked his wand through the quick series of motions necessary for multipart spell-casting, managing to assemble the wool swatches into a respectably sturdy pair of gloves. 

Purely by chance, his Colour Change Charm had turned the fabric a vibrant shade of green. Someone towards the front of the classroom snickered. 

“Thank you for the demonstration, Mr. Malfoy,” Flitwick squeaked. “Perhaps just a bit more attention next time, hm?” 

Draco nodded, somewhat chagrined, and shoved the green gloves out of sight. Though he kept his eyes averted, he imagined he could feel Potter watching him even after most of the class had turned to focus on their own piles of fabric. 

They spent the rest of the lesson in near silence as the students struggled with the dual challenge of nonverbal magic and concurrent charm casting. When the bell finally rang, there was a collective sigh of relief. 

Pansy, still admiring her own pink lace-trimmed gloves, turned to Draco. “Shall we get dinner?” 

Draco made no response, too occupied with his haphazard attempt to pack his bag while still keeping one eye on Potter. 

“Draco? Dinner? Hello?” Pansy waved her hand in front of his face, blocking his view. 

“I’ll meet you there, Pans.” Draco pushed her hand away, impatient. “There’s something I have to do.” 

Pansy pouted. “C’mon, Draco, I know you didn’t eat lunch.” 

Potter and his clingy friends were nearing the door. This was his chance. “I’ll _be_ there, Pans, I promise,” Draco insisted. “Just give me ten minutes, alright?” 

Pansy sighed, flipping her long hair over her shoulder as she stood. “Fine, fine, whatever you say.”

She brushed past him, reaching the door just before Potter. The dark-haired boy stepped back to let her pass, turning slightly towards Draco as he did. 

“Potter.” 

Draco spoke quietly, hoping maybe Granger and Weasley would be too wrapped up in their disgustingly couple-y giggling to hear. But Potter heard; those green eyes fixed on him, unsettling as ever. 

“Could I talk to you for a minute?” 

The insipid giggling faded. Weasley and Granger had definitely heard him this time. 

“What do you want, Malfoy?” Weasley cut in before Potter had a chance to speak. Granger bit her lip. 

“Ron, don’t…”. 

“When has he ever wanted to just talk to Harry?” the Weasel insisted, a mulish look on his face.

“I just think—”

Potter acted as if he could not hear them. His gaze had not wavered from Draco’s face. “Yeah, alright,” he answered, interrupting his friends’ bickering. 

Weasley’s expression turned mutinous. He opened his mouth as if to say something but before he could Granger grabbed his hand, pulling him towards the door. “We’ll see you at dinner, Harry,” she called over her shoulder, dragging Weasley away even as he cast Draco one last mistrustful glare. Draco watched them leave with a scowl, waiting to ensure they were really gone before returning his attention to Potter, who was watching him expectantly. 

“So, what did you want to talk about?” 

Finally alone in the now empty Charms classroom, Draco realized he had never considered how to actually broach the subject.

“Er, right.” He cleared his throat. “I wanted to ask if maybe you’d reconsider. About the potions competition.” No use beating around the bush about it, it wasn’t as if Potter expected friendly banter.

Potter frowned and looked away. “Like I said this morning, I’m not really interested, Malfoy. I don’t even like Potions.” 

Draco had already anticipated this response. Before sixth year, when some apparent miracle had occurred that catapulted Potter to the top of the class, Potter’s abysmal Potions skills had been a popular subject of derision for the Slytherins. 

“You’ll need Potions if you want to be an Auror.”

Potter raised an eyebrow. “How do you know I want to be an Auror?” 

“Please, with your obsessive need to save everyone you see, what else would you do?” Draco rolled his eyes. “Besides, it was all over the papers this summer that Kingsley Shacklebolt offered you a position in the training program. Merlin knows why you even came back here at all.” 

For some reason, Potter seemed irked by this response. His frown deepened, a small crease appearing on his forehead. 

“I wanted to finish my N.E.W.T.s,” he answered evasively, shoving his hands in his pockets. “And that’s all I’m here to do. I don’t really care to add on a load of extra work.” 

Draco had an answer ready for this argument as well. “I’ll do most of the work.” _As if he’d need Potter’s input._ “You won’t have to do anything.” 

Potter’s expression grew suspicious. “Why not just do it yourself then, or get someone else? I don’t know what Slughorn was on about, honestly,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m really not that good at Potions. I’m sure he’d change his mind if you asked.” 

They were coming upon it, the moment Draco knew was inevitable and yet had desperately hoped to avoid. He dug his nails into his palms. 

“I already asked.” He spoke through gritted teeth. “It has to be you.” 

Potter was watching him very closely. “Why?” 

The words rushed out in a furious burst. “Because they don’t accept submissions from Death Eaters, alright?” 

Potter blinked. From the look on his face, he still didn’t get it. “What does that have to do with…?” 

Dear Salazar, did Draco really have to spell it out for him? “I need your name, Potter,” Draco snapped, unable to smother his irritation at the Gryffindor’s obtuseness, though he knew anger would not serve him well just then. 

Comprehension finally dawned in Potter’s eyes. “Slughorn thinks that if we do it together, they’ll accept your submission.” It was more of a statement than a question, but Draco gave a tight nod. 

For a long moment, Potter just stared at him. The intensity of his gaze was such that Draco thought he might as well be standing there naked for how exposed he felt. “Why does this matter so much to you? This competition?” 

Draco was not prepared for this response. He had been expecting Potter to ask what was in it for him, to take advantage of his obvious position of power over Draco in that moment. He hadn’t expected _curiosity._

“It’s the most prestigious potions publication in Europe.” It was a silly question, Draco thought. But then again, Potter had been raised by Muggles, and he’d clearly never had much interest in any kind of academic achievement. Perhaps he simply didn’t understand. “You should consider it an honour to even be offered the chance. I, for one, don’t want to waste it.” 

Potter, it would seem, was not satisfied with this answer. “That’s not it,” he said, shaking his head. “You hate me, Malfoy. You wouldn’t come asking me for help if it were just about the prestige.” 

The incredible presumptuousness of the statement annoyed Draco only slightly less than the fact that what Potter said was true, at least in part. It wasn’t the prestige of the thing Draco cared about most, not exactly. 

“Perhaps not,” he conceded, mulling over his words before he spoke. He hadn’t imagined Potter would pry this far into his motivations; how much of the truth did Draco have to give before he was convinced? “If you must know, I don’t have a lot of opportunities open to me anymore. The prestige is nice in itself, of course. But if I were to win…” He hesitated only a moment, then ploughed on, “I might actually have a chance of being hired after I leave here.” 

“Hired to do what?” 

“Merlin’s pants, Potter, is this the Inquisition? Do you plan to burn me at the stake if I answer wrong?” 

For a second, Draco almost thought Potter was going to laugh. His lips quirked up at the corners, halfway to a grin before he seemed to catch himself and his expression quickly smoothed. Draco felt an inexplicable twinge of disappointment. 

“Fine then, don’t answer.” Potter shrugged. “But you’re the one who needs my help, remember?” 

_If I had known you were going to be this nosy, maybe I wouldn’t have bothered,_ Draco wanted to retort. Instead, he took a deep breath, steeling himself.

“If I’m published in _The Practical Potioneer_ , I might still have a hope of being accepted into the St. Mungo’s Healer Training Program.” This cost Draco something to admit; he had given up on his silly childhood ambition the day he took the Mark, when he thought he would die before he’d ever finish school. Saying it out loud now, when it was still a near-impossible dream, sounded foolish even to his own ears. “Satisfied?” 

The black-haired boy still had that inquisitive look on his face, like he wanted to ask yet another unnecessary and invasive question. Before he could, Draco pressed, “So will you help me out or not?” 

It was the moment of truth. Seconds ticked by while Potter chewed his lip. “Er…” 

All of that disgusting honesty, and Potter was still going to say no. The prat couldn’t even bother to make up a reason. _It’s because it’s you,_ the cruel voice in the back of Draco’s mind jeered. _He doesn’t want to help a Death Eater._

Draco felt he was going to be sick. He was out of options; there was only one thing left to do, his very last resort. When he spoke, all he could see was green.

“Please.”

The word—so unfamiliar on Draco’s tongue—fell between them with an unnatural weight. Potter’s eyes went wide, mouth hanging open in a comical expression of disbelief. 

“I, um—” Potter cleared his throat. Draco followed the movement of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed with an unusual fascination. “Yeah, I’ll do it. Okay.” 

All it had taken was one little word. Perhaps, Draco thought, he should use that more often. 

“You will?”

Potter nodded. He was looking at Draco with that unfathomable expression again, the one that made Draco want to pull his hair out and Charm all of his possessions purple. 

“Well… thanks.” Another word Draco was unaccustomed to saying to Potter, but this one at least felt a little less painful. “I’ll tell Slughorn tomorrow. Or, actually…” He remembered Slughorn’s words from earlier, cautioning him not to pressure Potter into something he didn’t want to do. “Could you tell him that you changed your mind?” 

“Sure, I guess.” Potter raised an eyebrow. “Why?” 

“He, er, may have intimated that I shouldn’t bother you about it any more.” 

Potter huffed out something like a laugh. “I see you took that advice to heart.” 

“He seemed worried that I might upset your delicate sensibilities with my harassment,” Draco drawled, all too happy to fall back into their familiar rapport of insults and gibes. “I, however, had no such concerns.” 

Oddly enough, Potter grinned. “Thank Merlin for that,” he answered. What that cryptic response meant, Draco hadn’t the faintest idea. “So was that all you needed? Because I’m starving, and I don’t want to miss dinner.” 

“Yes, that’s all,” Draco waved him away dismissively. “Go stuff your face, as usual.” 

Halfway out the door, Potter stopped to glance back over his shoulder.

“Aren’t you coming?” 

Draco shrugged. “I’m not hungry.”

Potter’s eyebrows knitted together. “But, didn’t you tell Parkinson you would meet—?”

“Been eavesdropping, Potter?” 

Whatever progress they might have made towards civility vanished with the sudden coldness in Draco’s voice. Potter shook his head, his expression almost disappointed as he muttered “Whatever, Malfoy,” and moved to leave.

Draco felt an instant surge of regret. Potter was doing him a favour, after all; it would be wrong to leave it on such a sour note. 

“Just for the record, I don’t hate you.” The words were out of his mouth before the more rational part of his brain could stop him, and immediately he felt the need to explain. “I just mean, you said that I hated you, and that’s not true.” Draco bit down on his tongue, silently chastising himself for how stupid he sounded. 

Potter turned. 

“That’s good to know,” he replied slowly. “Because I don’t hate you either.” 

They locked eyes and Draco’s heart stuttered. For a brief moment, Potter smiled, and like a reflex, Draco smiled back, just a little. 

Draco stayed in the Charms classroom long after Potter had left, sitting on a desk and staring off into space as he went over their last exchange in his mind again and again. After everything that had happened between them, he never would have believed that he and Potter could have such a benign interaction, let alone one where Potter smiled at him with such unambiguous sincerity. And he definitely never would have believed he would feel so flustered about it. 

 

~

 

Draco should’ve seen it coming. It was a testament to how distracted he was that the loud banging on his door caught him by surprise.

“DRACO! DRACO LUCIUS MALFOY! I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE! YOU CAN’T IGNORE ME!” 

The furious hammering stopped as the door flew open. “Bloody hell, Pans, keep it down, will you?” Draco griped as his best friend shoved past him into his room. “I wasn’t ignoring you. Just knock like a normal person next time.” 

Pansy glared. “You said you’d meet me in the Great Hall for dinner and you never showed up,” she accused, folding her arms across her chest. “What do you call that?” 

“I wasn’t—”

“You _promised. _”__

____

____

“It’s not—”

“I sat there waiting and waiting and you didn’t come and you _promised. _”__

____

____

Draco sighed. There was no winning with Pansy. “I’m sorry, alright? I was with Potter.” 

Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. He watched as she pursed her lips, clearly torn between deep curiosity and lingering anger. The curiosity won out. “What do you mean, you were with Potter? Doing _what _?”__

____

____

Draco sat back on his bed, spreading his hands against the green silk of his duvet. Someone—Blaise, probably—had changed everything back to its original colour. “We just talked,” he answered. “I… sort of needed his help with something.” 

Pansy plopped down next to him, kicking off her shoes and curling her feet up beneath her. “Alright, explain. And don’t leave out the details.” 

Draco leaned back, staring up at the bed’s canopy. A moment later, he felt Pansy lay down beside him so that they were shoulder to shoulder. It was the same familiar position in which they had spent countless hours in his old Slytherin dormitory, sometimes laughing and sharing secrets and sometimes, when everything seemed too awful for words, just laying there in silence. 

He started from the beginning, with the meeting with Slughorn that morning after Potions class. Pansy was quiet as he talked, only turning her head to look at him when he reached the end, hesitantly describing the surreal moment less than an hour ago in the Charms classroom when Potter had smiled and said he didn’t hate him. 

When he finished, Pansy rolled onto her side, propping her head up on her hand. “So this Potions thing is a big deal to you.” Draco nodded. “And Potter has agreed to do it.” Draco nodded again. “So then what’s the problem?” 

“There isn’t a problem.” 

“Then why do you look so upset?” 

Draco let out a sigh of frustration. “I’m not upset. It’s just weird, is all. The whole conversation was weird. You should’ve heard the nosy questions he was asking, and the way he smiled, it was so…” 

“Weird?” Pansy supplied.

“Yeah.” 

“But you said yourself, you don’t hate him anymore,” she pointed out. “Which, by the way, when did you stop hating Potter?” 

“I don’t know.” Draco pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to organize the chaos in his head. “I haven’t really hated him for a long time, I guess. I’m not so sure anymore that I ever did.” 

He didn’t have to look to know the expression of disbelief on Pansy’s face. 

“Look, he’s saved my life more times than he should. And somehow, he’s _still_ doing me favours. I don’t get it.” He raked his hands back through his hair, a rare gesture for him given how fussy he was about his appearance. “I don’t get _him._ ” 

It was a ridiculous thing to complain about, since Draco had practically begged Potter to help him; obviously he had been hoping Potter would agree. But now that had said yes, and after the way he had looked at Draco—the way he was looking at Draco so often nowadays—the Slytherin couldn’t stop thinking that none of it made sense. He was the last person Potter should be doing anything for. 

For a long moment, Pansy was silent. When she finally spoke, it was not at all what Draco expected. 

“I heard that he and the Weasley girl broke up this summer.” 

Draco’s brow furrowed. “What does that have to do with anything?” 

Pansy's eyes were shrewd as she continued without answering his question, “People are saying he wasn’t interested in her anymore. That maybe he’s, you know…” 

“That he’s _what_?” Draco demanded. 

“Of a different persuasion.” She raised her eyebrows suggestively. 

“You mean he’s _bent_?” 

“That’s the rumour, anyway.” She was watching him very closely in that way she had that made Draco nervous, as if his thoughts were spelled out across his face for her to read. He pushed himself roughly up into a sitting position, turning his back to her. 

“Why should I care about that?” he asked, stomach squirming uncomfortably. 

He felt the bed shift as Pansy sat up. “I just thought you might be interested to know.” 

Draco didn’t reply. Pansy seemed to take the hint. “Well, anyway, I have some Transfiguration reading to finish.” As she stood to leave, she reached over and ruffled his hair affectionately, making Draco scowl. “I’ll see you at breakfast in the morning?” Her tone left little room for negotiation, and after standing her up for dinner, Draco didn’t dare argue. He nodded and Pansy departed, the door clicking shut behind her. Though she was gone, her voice lingered in his mind. 

_"People are saying he wasn’t interested in her anymore. That maybe he’s, you know…"_

Distractedly, Draco began stripping off his school robes, grabbing his towel with the idea that maybe a long, hot shower would help him clear his head. Pansy’s comments had only served to stir his confusion. What had she been insinuating, anyway, telling him those things about Potter? Why would she think Draco would be interested? Pansy loved gossip, she always had, and over the years Draco had often joined her in sharing malicious accusations and unconfirmed rumours, especially about Potter. Yet this time seemed different, somehow. Why had she brought it up like that, so seemingly out of the blue? 

It occurred to Draco as he was pulling off his tie that maybe, just maybe, Pansy thought _he_ was gay, and that’s why she had told him. Which would be a completely absurd and baseless assumption, of course, except… 

He crumpled his tie in his fist, chewing his lip as he thought. Could she have found out about that time in sixth year, when Cameron Vaisey had cornered him in the locker room after Quidditch practice? Heat rose in Draco’s face as he remembered that rainy afternoon, full of the frantic slide of tongues and fumbling of hands. He had never bothered to think much on that incident and what it might mean. His sixth year had been a living nightmare, every moment feeling like a wand was at his throat, like he was one mistake away from death or torture. Some awkward groping and kissing, even with another boy, had hardly seemed worth worrying about. At the time, he had chalked it up to his loneliness, telling himself it was a product of his desperate need for comfort from someone, anyone. It hadn’t meant anything. 

Or had it? No girl had ever made feel like that, and Vaisey hadn’t even been that amazing. But it was only a one-off affair during one of the worst periods of his life; surely that was not the thing to judge by. And he was certain there was no way Pansy could know about that, anyway. He had been pretty convincing when he warned Vaisey what would happen if he told anyone, and he doubted that weak-willed boy would have blabbed. But why, then, would she think Draco swung the other way? Was he reading too much into this? 

It was all Potter’s fault, he concluded, shaking himself out of his daze and heading across the hall to the showers. It was Potter’s fault that he had felt so weird and unsettled since coming back to Hogwarts, Potter’s fault that Pansy had started insinuating crazy things, Potter’s fault that he was now doubting his own sanity. 

Since there were so few eighth years, the boys' showers were shared, although mercifully the bathroom was empty when Draco entered. He turned on the water and stripped quickly, setting aside his neatly folded clothes before ducking under the hot spray. 

Yes, he thought as he let the cascade of water soothe the tension in his shoulders, it was Potter’s fault, and nothing else. He needed to relax, and to forget this paranoia. A good wank, he figured, was the best way to achieve that. It was only because Potter was to blame for so much of Draco’s confusion and stress that day that he thought of him while he did it, unable to avoid those damned green eyes even in his fantasies.


	3. Scars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who is reading, and thank you for the kudos/comments! This is the first fic I've ever posted on AO3 so it's really cool to know that people like it!
> 
> Draco is the king of being in denial but things will pick up soon, I promise.

Any lingering worry Draco might have had that Potter was going to back out on him vanished two days later when Slughorn once again called them up to his desk at the end of Potions class. Judging by the satisfied smile on the Professor’s face as they approached, Draco knew Potter must have already spoken with him. He took care to stand a deliberate distance away from Potter, unable to forget what Pansy had told him. 

“Can’t tell you boys how thrilled I am you’ll be competing! I think we have a great shot, I really do,” Slughorn beamed, leaning across his desk towards them as he spoke. “I’ve submitted students’ names before, of course, and I remember when Damocles Belby…” 

At this point, Slughorn launched into a longwinded recounting of all the prominent potioneers he had taught in his time, focusing heavily on his own hand in all of their successes. Surreptitiously, Draco stole a glance in Potter’s direction. Potter had schooled his features into an expression that to the untrained observer might be interpreted as polite attention. But Draco knew better; the slight glaze over Potter’s eyes betrayed the fact that he had as little interest in Slughorn’s self-congratulatory anecdotes as Draco did. 

Capitalizing on Potter’s momentary inattention and Slughorn’s wistful reminiscing, Draco took a moment to appraise the boy beside him. His dark hair was the same disaster as always, his eyes the same bright green. But Draco had never quite appreciated how clear and smooth his skin was, or how striking his cheekbones looked from this angle, as they were so often hidden by the round frames of his glass. And were his glasses new? They looked similar to the ones he had always worn, but seemed to fit his face better, somehow. 

“—he was published a few years later, as I’m sure you know, and I like to think that—”

Potter had grown bored with pretending to listen to Slughorn’s story, or perhaps he sensed that he was being watched, because just then he turned his head. As he caught Draco in his stare, the blonde became acutely aware that he hadn’t just been looking at Potter—he had been _admiring_ him. He quickly looked away, hoping in vain that Potter wouldn’t see the incriminating heat rising on his cheeks. 

“’—and of course we all know how that turned out!” Slughorn paused, looking at his two students expectantly. Unsure what kind of response was warranted, Draco gave a small nod, an action that Potter mirrored. Fortunately, this seemed to satisfy Slughorn, who leaned back in his chair, resting his hands on his ample belly. 

“Now, I know it’s not much time, but I’ll need to submit your names and a brief explanation of the subject of your project by next week. Do you think you can come up with an idea by then of what kind of potion you’d like to develop?” 

Although the question was directed at them both, Draco knew both Slughorn and Potter were looking to him for an answer. “Yes, Professor, that shouldn’t be a problem,” Draco replied. “I have some ideas already.” 

“Good, good,” Slughorn nodded thoughtfully, smoothing his moustache. “Well, if you boys need any help or advice in the meantime, you know where to find me.” 

Determined not to have another conversation like the one that had left him so confused the other night, Draco murmured his thanks to the Potions Professor and left the room quickly, hurrying to get to the Great Hall where he knew Pansy would be waiting for him at dinner. Unfortunately, he didn’t move fast enough. 

“So…” Potter’s voice caught up to Draco on the stairs. Resigned, Draco slowed his pace, but didn’t stop. “What ideas do you have, for the potion?” 

Draco didn’t turn as he spoke. “What do you care? Like I said before, you don’t need to worry about doing any of the work. I’ve got it covered.” 

He had nearly reached the top of the stairs when, with a sudden burst of speed, Potter cut him off, blocking him from reaching the Entrance Hall. Draco raised an eyebrow. 

“What’s your problem, Potter?” 

“What if I want to help with the work?” Potter asked, pushing his hair back from his face. He looked slightly flushed, probably from running up the stairs. 

Draco frowned. “Why would you want to do that?” He stepped forward, hoping Potter would take the hint and move out of his way, but the Gryffindor didn’t budge. “You said yourself you didn’t want any extra work, and I am exempting you from any obligation. All you need to worry about is liaising with Slughorn. Now get out of my way.” He attempted to move forward again, this time using his shoulder to try and shove Potter out of his way. The other boy didn’t put up any resistance and Draco almost thought that would be the end of it. That is, until he felt Potter grab his arm. 

“I changed my mind.” 

That stopped Draco in his tracks. “What do you mean, you changed your mind?” They were standing quite close, Draco couldn’t help noticing, with Potter’s hand resting just above his elbow. Even through his robes, Draco could feel the warmth of his grip. 

“I mean that I want to help with all of it,” Potter replied. “The potions stuff too.” 

Draco couldn’t tell if he felt more confused or exasperated. Potter had been so adamant before that he didn’t want the extra workload, that he was much too occupied with everything else in his very busy life. Why the bloody hell did he suddenly want to be involved? 

“What are you on about?” Despite his annoyance, Draco made no move to shake off Potter’s hand. At this point it seemed like pig-headed Potter probably wouldn’t let him leave without a fight, anyway. “Not two days ago you told me—”

“I changed my mind,” Potter repeated, cutting him off midsentence. Draco waited for him to illuminate further, but somehow it seemed that Potter thought this response was sufficient, despite the fact that it answered exactly zero of Draco’s questions. 

“Why?” 

“I just did, alright?” Potter evaded, sounding more defensive than Draco thought he had any right to be. “Now, what kind of potion are we making?” 

Potter’s expression was so determined and so earnest that Draco almost gave in. If there was one thing he loved, it was talking about potions, especially his own experimentations, and on some level he thought it might actually be of use to have Potter’s help, if only to have someone to listen and bounce his ideas off of. But his suspicion ran too deep, and Potter’s responses were far too lacking for Draco to even begin to believe he had spontaneously developed a passion for the subject. 

“No.” 

“No what?” Potter frowned. 

“No, I will not let you help.” Draco pulled his arm out of Potter’s grasp, which had grown lax. He supposed he could have left then, with Potter no longer holding him in place, or at least he could have put some space between them, seeing how they were standing barely a step apart in the narrow stairwell. But he did neither, only reaching to rub absently at the place on his arm where Potter’s hand had been. 

There was a familiar glint in Potter’s eyes: it was the look he wore when he was seconds away from stealing the Snitch out from under Draco’s grasp; the look he wore moments before aiming a jinx; the undeniable look of someone who not only refused to back down but who knew they would triumph. It made Draco shiver. 

“Well, that’s too bad,” Potter replied smoothly. “I suppose I should go tell Slughorn, then, that I’ve decided not to participate after all.” He smiled even as Draco’s face twisted with fury. He had Draco now, and he knew it. 

Draco gnashed his teeth. “ _Fine_ , Potter. I would be _thrilled_ to have your help.” He spoke with exaggerated politeness, glaring daggers all the while. “Why don’t we meet tomorrow evening to discuss _our_ potion?” 

“That sounds fine to me,” Potter said, not even attempting to conceal his satisfied grin. 

Draco was now thoroughly irritated. “Is there anything else you’d like to hold over me?” he snapped. “Because if not, I’d like to get to dinner, I’m supposed to meet—”

“Parkinson?” Potter finished for him, his expression souring. Draco made no reply, wondering at the harshness in Potter’s tone. “I won’t keep your girlfriend waiting. I’ll see you tomorrow night.” 

Despite the dismissal, Draco didn’t move, too taken aback by the sheer preposterousness of Potter’s statement. “My _girlfriend_?” If he weren’t still so annoyed, he would have laughed. “Pansy is _not_ my girlfriend.” He shuddered at the thought. They had shared a brief flirtation when they were younger, sure, but that had mostly been a product of convenience and their family’s expectations rather than out of any real romantic interest. Nowadays, Draco thought of Pansy more like a sister. 

“She’s not?” 

“Good gods, no,” Draco answered. It was peculiar, but he could have sworn Potter looked relieved. “Why, are you interested? Looking to dabble with a Slytherin now that the Weasel girl has left you?” He didn’t know if Weasley had been the one to break it off or not, but judging by Potter’s face, he seemed to have struck a nerve. The Gryffindor’s cheeks reddened but, surprisingly, he didn’t look away, and the boldness in his gaze struck Draco with nearly as much force as his response.

“Maybe I am.” 

Draco sucked in a sharp breath. The stairwell seemed much smaller all of a sudden, and much warmer. They were still standing just a hair too close, and maybe he was going mad but Draco was pretty sure Potter wasn’t talking about Pansy. The thought gave him a thrill that was somewhere between excitement and panic. His thoughts were beginning to race too fast for him to control, and his heightened awareness of their proximity— _had Potter gotten closer?_ —suddenly threatened to overwhelm him. He swallowed and stepped back, holding the stair railing to keep himself steady, and mustered an approximation of a sneer.

“Sadly, I don’t think you’re her type.” It wasn’t his best retort, and he didn’t quite achieve the cool and mocking tone he was going for, but he least managed to keep from sounding breathless. 

Unable to stand there a second longer, he added an abrupt, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Potter,” and turned to climb the last steps to the main floor. Though he wanted nothing more than to flee to his dormitory, he kept his pace unhurried as he headed to the Great Hall. He knew Potter was behind him, watching, and it would look weird if he skipped dinner now after he had expressly said he was going to meet Pansy. 

He directed himself towards the dark-haired girl waving at him from the Slytherin table, taking care to choose the seat across from her with his back to the rest of the hall, avoiding the temptation to look in the direction of the Gryffindors. As usual, he wasn’t particularly hungry, now less than ever with the mix of adrenaline and anxiety still coursing through his body, but Pansy was already shoving a plate of food across the table to him. Unwilling to argue and even less willing to explain the reason his stomach was in knots, Draco picked at his green beans as Pansy recounted how Millicent had accidentally turned Justin Finch-Fletchley’s toad into a cactus while practicing nonverbal cross-species switching spells for Transfiguration class tomorrow, leading the Hufflepuff to turn her hair into snakes in retaliation. Grateful for the distraction, Draco threw himself into the story, joining Pansy in speculating wildly about whether Millicent had a crush on Finch-Fletchley and actually transfigured his pet to get his attention.

It was only when he was in the quiet darkness of his dormitory and halfway under the spell of sleep that Draco returned to the stairwell and Potter’s low voice, allowing himself to imagine a different ending to their conversation, one where he hadn’t stepped away. 

 

~

 

Draco didn’t look around as he heard the door to the Potions room creak open. 

“You’re late.” 

Potter dropped his bag on the floor with a heavy thud and pulled up a stool on the opposite side of the narrow table where Draco was busy setting up his cauldron. “By five minutes!”

“Five minutes late is still late,” Draco answered, realizing as he said it that he sounded exactly like his mother. He looked up briefly to see Potter roll his eyes. He continued to fuss around with his potions equipment, arranging everything just so while Potter watched in an interested sort of way, leaning his elbows on the table. Draco didn’t know how he could look so relaxed; after their last conversation, even a quick glance from him was enough to make Draco tense up. He hadn’t even been able to tell Potter directly about where to meet him that evening, choosing instead to send him a note during Transfiguration telling him the time and the place.

Potter eyed the cauldron. “Are we brewing already? I thought we were just going to talk about your ideas.” 

Draco snorted. “I don’t need to ‘talk about my ideas’ with you, Potter.” He pulled a few small, sealed vials from his bag, each filled with a different colour potion. Slughorn had given them permission to use the classroom in the evenings, on the condition that they didn’t test anything too risky without supervision. “I already know what I want to do. There’s no use wasting time faffing around.” 

He lined the vials up on the table and lit a low fire under the cauldron. Potter was quiet for a moment, and then asked, “What should I do, then?” 

“You could leave,” Draco muttered, tapping the first vial with his wand to uncork it. The response came like a reflex to him, and he didn’t think much of it until he saw Potter lean back from the table and reach for his bag as if he really was about to go. At once, Draco wished he could take it back. Despite how on-edge the Gryffindor made him feel and how hard Draco had fought against him being there, Draco didn’t really want him to leave. It had simply never occurred to him that if he pushed too hard, Potter might actually give up. 

“Here,” he said, thrusting the vial he had just uncorked into Potter’s hand. “Pour that in the cauldron and stir it clockwise until it boils.” 

Caught by surprise, Potter took the vial with clumsy fingers, only barely managing not to spill it, but he hesitated only a few seconds before following Draco’s directions. As he added the potion to the cauldron and gave it a slow swirl, Draco could’ve sworn he saw him smile. 

“So what is this?” Potter asked, dark hair falling across his forehead as he leaned over the cauldron to examine the potion he was stirring. 

Draco perched on the stool he’d pushed aside earlier, watching Potter rather than the cauldron. Thinking that Potter was good-looking, he’d already decided, did not mean anything. It wasn’t as if Draco was attracted to him; it was just an objective fact that he’d ignored for many years. He could set aside enough of their childhood animosity to admit that Potter was, by most measures, handsome. Frustrating and annoying and in need of a hairbrush, but handsome. And if Potter was going to spend so much time staring at Draco, as he had clearly resolved to do, it was only fair for Draco to look at him a little bit more often than usual as well. No big deal.

“It’s a scar-fading solution.” He turned down the flame with a tap of his wand and gestured for Potter to stop stirring. “It works best on scars resulting from non-magical injuries, but it can be effective on some kinds of magically-caused scars as well. The problem is, it can’t heal or vanish scars caused by dark magic.” He indicated the other vials on the table. “These are all similar solutions. Different formulas, same limitations.” 

Potter’s brow furrowed slightly. “You know, I never really thought about it before,” he said thoughtfully, glancing between the cauldron and the vials. “I’ve had so many injuries that were healed with magic that never left any scar. And then, others…” 

Draco’s eyes flickered to the infamous scar on Potter’s forehead, wondering what other injuries had left permanent marks on his body. 

“All these potions, and none of them do anything?” he asked, waving a hand at the vials on the table. 

“It’s not that they don’t do _anything_.” The knot of anxiety that had twisted Draco’s stomach since Potter first entered the room began to fade a little as he spoke, settling into a topic he felt more comfortable with. “They have the same general purpose, but some work better for certain injuries or for certain people than others. Like this one—” he indicated the potion in the cauldron, “—is thought to be more effective on scars resulting from dark creature injuries. It’s perhaps one of the most advanced in the field, so I’ve been toying with the formula. Using it while its warm seems to help with the efficacy. But as far I know, it’s still not powerful or sophisticated enough to safely eliminate the traces that dark magic leaves in the skin, so it can’t ever fully heal those kinds of scars.” 

“Dark creature injuries, huh?” Potter leaned over the cauldron. The potion was no longer boiling, but it was still warm enough that tendrils of steam curled from the surface. Potter reached for the set of silver brewing tools that Draco had laid out earlier, selecting a shorter stirring rod that ended in a shallow spoon. “May I?” He gestured towards the potion. 

Draco, curious as to what Potter could possibly be doing, gave a nod, watching as Potter pushed up the sleeve of his shirt and then dipped the spoon into the potion. Draco moved closer, having to lean around the cauldron to see what Potter was doing. With his forearm now exposed, Draco could see a large circular scar just below his elbow, pale against his skin. Intrigued, he watched as Potter carefully dripped a small amount of the potion onto the scar, the rose-coloured liquid absorbing the moment it made contact with his skin. They were both silent, waiting, and as they watched, the colour of the scar shifted just a shade closer to Potter’s regular skin tone, and the edges of the mark seemed to blur a little. It was an almost imperceptible change, but it was something.

“What is that from?” Draco was finding it hard to look away from Potter’s exposed forearm, even as he began to roll his sleeve back down. 

“Basilisk,” Potter answered simply, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to have been bitten by one of the world’s rarest and most deadly creatures. 

“A _Basilisk_?” Draco’s eyes widened. “You mean, in our second year, all those stories about you and the Chamber of Secrets…?” 

Potter nodded. When Draco continued to stare at him, he added, “It sort of bit me when I killed it.” 

Draco made a noise in his throat somewhere between a laugh and scoff. “Ah, right, when you killed it, of course,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. How Potter could describe such wild things with such intense modesty was beyond him. Up until now, he had never really believed the stories about Potter saving the school from the monster in the Chamber of Secrets at the end of their second year. Back then it had seemed insane. A 12 year old slaying a near-mythical monster—who would have believed that? But now, given all of Potter’s feats, him besting a Basilisk didn’t seem so implausible. 

Though it was still mad enough to warrant a less blasé attitude, Draco thought. 

“How did you survive the venom?”

Potter set aside the stirring rod he’d used to sample the potion, shrugging. “I had some help from Dumbledore’s phoenix, Fawkes. It’s kind of a long story.” 

Draco bit his lip, holding in the words ready on his tongue. Wasn’t he trying to avoid any unnecessary interaction with Potter? His usual logic said he should stay silent, but lately that logic seemed to be holding less and less sway over his decisions.

“Will you tell me sometime?” His voice did not sound like his own. When those green eyes fixed on him, bright with surprise, his breath caught in his throat.

“Yeah, sure.” Potter smiled, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table. “So, with these potions – you want to try and make a better one, that can actually heal scars from dark magic?” 

“Oh, er…” Draco had nearly forgotten what they had been talking about in the first place. At Potter’s question, he shifted in his seat, straightening up and away from the table where he had been leaning like Potter was now. “Yes. I’ve been working on it myself already, so I’ve got some ideas to go off of, and I figure it fits the theme, you know, ‘recovery and reconstruction,’” he quoted. “The war left a lot of scars that can’t be healed, at least not yet. I think it could help a lot of people to move forward. It might not be possible, but it’s worth trying.” 

It was something Draco had been thinking about since the day the war had ended; he had thought about it while sitting alone those long weeks in Azkaban, and at his trial, and while at home under house arrest, until he saw scars everywhere he looked. He thought especially of monsters like Greyback, who Draco had watched tear into his victims while he stood by and did nothing, and whose stench of blood had lingered in Draco’s home long after the man himself was gone. He thought of those survivors like Lavender Brown, who were disfigured for life. And the more Draco had thought about it, the more he had felt that Greyback was not the only one to blame for those scars—it was also the fault of every coward who had enabled him, or who had been too afraid or too weak to step up and stop him when they had the chance. It was the fault of people like Draco. 

On a selfish level, Draco had also thought about the Mark on his arm, forever a relic of all of his failings. It had faded since Voldemort’s death, but he knew he would never be free of the ugly scar, just as he would never be free of the crimes it represented. But he had to try—if not for himself, then for everyone else who didn’t deserve the scars the war had left them with. And so he had started brewing. 

Though he said none of this out loud, the Gryffindor boy was staring at him like he’d never quite seen him before. After a prolonged silence, Draco couldn’t take it anymore. “So what do you think?” As much as he had claimed he didn’t need or care about Potter’s opinion, the lack of response was making him nervous. 

“I think it’s a great idea,” Potter answered, and something in his voice made Draco wonder if maybe he understood exactly why Draco wanted to make this potion. “Amazing, actually.” 

“Well… good.” Draco was quickly growing uncomfortable again under Potter’s aggressively green gaze. He reached for his book bag, searching through it briefly before pulling out a thick stack of parchment, each page filled with the neat, elegant script of his handwriting. “I’ve been working with a combination of Shrake spine and unicorn hair, for the purifying properties…” 

As he began to relate the successes and failures of his experiments, spreading his notes out beside the cauldron, he felt the awkwardness slowly start to ease. If he didn’t think too hard about who was sitting across from him, listening to his every rambling word, it wasn’t so terrible to have someone there. After months in the forced solitude of Malfoy Manor, brewing by himself in his study, Draco had forgotten how nice it was to not be alone. 

 

~

 

Looking out over the unruffled surface of the lake, the cool air smelling pleasantly of damp grass, Draco felt the chaos in his mind begin to settle. After a restless night, he had gotten up while it was still dark and slipped out of the castle with his broom in hand, knowing that no one else would be awake so early on a Saturday morning. He had flown laps around the Quidditch pitch until the sun finally crept over the horizon, streaking the empty stands with the gold of morning light. Now, his broom rested against a tree a few yards away while Draco sat at the rocky edge of the Black Lake with his arms wrapped around his knees, watching the sky over the water fade into a pale, cloudless blue. 

He was supposed to meet with Potter again later that afternoon to work on their potion, which was probably why he had been unable to sleep. It wasn’t strictly Potter’s fault, Draco knew, though he wished he could blame it on the Gryffindor. He just couldn’t explain what it was that had him tossing and turning even more than usual at night, or why he felt like someone had hexed him every time Potter looked his way. Maybe Potter was hexing him, for all he knew. That, at least, would make sense—much more sense than Potter smiling at him, or wanting to help him, or telling him his ideas were amazing. Whatever game it was Potter was playing, it was messing with Draco’s mind, and he hated it. 

_Unless it isn’t a game,_ he thought. Maybe Potter was just trying to move forward, and Draco was the one clinging to the past. Maybe it was okay for things with Potter to change; everything else in his life had, so why not this? He could be friends with Potter, if that’s what the other wanted, or at the very least he could try and be less of an ass. He’d done much more difficult things than that in his life, so why did it seem like such a challenge? What was he so afraid of?

Much as he didn’t want to admit it, Potter wasn’t so bad as he had always thought. And if Draco was being honest with himself—which he wasn’t—he was kind of looking forward to spending the afternoon with the Gryffindor. Confusing and awkward as their interactions were, something about Potter made him excited in a way he had not felt in a very long time.


	4. The Loudest Sound

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to say first off that I am really sorry about the very long delay in posting this chapter! In the last month I finished my master's degree and moved to a new city, so things have been a little hectic to say the least. But I have a lot more time now and I'm going to try and update a lot more regularly!
> 
> Thank you so so much to everyone who has been reading or is still reading, your likes and comments mean the world to me and I really hope that you enjoy this chapter!

Contrary to what Draco had always believed, it turned out that Potter was not a total disaster when it came to Potions. In fact, although Draco would never say it to his face, he was actually pretty useful to have around. With Potter helping prepare ingredients and taking notes, testing out formulas was much more efficient than when Draco worked alone. Even though Draco could have easily written up a very basic project proposal to submit, Slughorn had given them a whole week before they needed to let him know what they planned to do, and in that time, Draco was determined to have some preliminary results to show. With Potter’s name on the project, Draco wasn’t too worried about being outright barred from entering the contest, but just to be safe he wanted to make sure their project looked promising. 

It was for that reason—and that reason only—that he insisted he and Potter meet almost every night after class to continue working. Draco certainly wasn’t going to let Potter slack off after the Gryffindor had so stubbornly insisted that he be involved. 

But if Potter had a problem with the frequency of their meetings, he didn’t show it. He followed all of Draco’s directions without protest, and after that first meeting, he never showed up even a minute late. Their conversations were simple and mostly focused on their work—there was no hint of the suggestiveness from the stairwell, which Draco was beginning to think he had imagined altogether—but at the least their interactions no longer felt so awkward or forced. 

If Draco hadn’t known better, he could’ve sworn Potter was even enjoying himself. He’d catch the Gryffindor smiling sometimes as he chopped up ginger root or measured out nettles or whatever else Draco had instructed him to do that day. And Draco had been very motivated to keep him busy, because every moment that Potter’s hands were free—and even sometimes when he probably should have been paying attention to the toxic ingredient or sharp knife he was holding—he occupied himself with watching Draco. 

Draco had hoped that, after a while, he might get used to Potter’s uncanny stare. But the weight of the green eyes was heavy as ever, seeming to follow him even after they parted ways each evening. Some nights, it would trail Draco all the way back to his dormitory where he would lie awake, wrapped up in green. More than once, looking up at the emerald of his canopy, he found his hands slipping under his pyjama bottoms, stroking himself with an unexplained desperation until the green exploded into stars. He found he slept much better those nights. 

The only good thing about being watched was that it made it easier for Draco to justify how much he watched Potter in return. He would steal glances in class and across the Great Hall, and those moments when Potter was busy stirring and Draco was ostensibly taking notes, he would catalogue the curls of hair around Potter’s ears, the way he sometimes bit his lip as he worked, and the dark bruise of the circles under his eyes that never seemed to fade. 

Draco would linger longest on those dark circles. By most measures, Potter was the picture of a well-adjusted survivor, always smiling at meals and busy chatting and laughing with his friends in the common room, all with an ease that Draco envied. But those dark circles told the truth behind the cheer—they were the one crack in the façade, the damning evidence that not all could be as rosy as it seemed in the Chosen One’s world.

He might never have understood the real depth of Potter’s pretence had he not gotten up late one night to go to the bathroom, long after everyone else was asleep. He didn’t notice Potter right away; after the darkness of his dormitory, the light of the bathroom was almost blinding, and he was halfway to the toilets before the reflection in the mirror caught his eye. 

There, across from the sinks, sat a figure, hunched with his back against the wall and arms wrapped tightly around his knees. The dark, messy hair was unmistakably Potter’s and yet Draco could hardly believe that was who he was seeing. The man in the reflection—curled into himself like he wanted nothing more than to disappear—looked almost like a child. 

Their eyes met in the mirror, the icy grey gaze softened with sleep and confusion and the vivid green frozen wide in surprise and something close to fear. His glasses were askew. For a moment, Draco wondered if Potter had been crying; his face was flushed and his cheeks looked damp. But then he noticed the wet strands of hair sticking to his forehead and decided it was much more likely that Potter had just splashed his face with water from the sink before slumping to the floor. 

They stood there like two people stupefied, caught in mutual shock and wordless understanding. Draco didn’t have to ask what Potter was doing there; on some level, he knew. But the silence was too much, and after seconds that seemed to last years, he finally dared to break it.

“Potter?” 

The whispered word echoed around them. Potter looked so small sitting there, and suddenly all Draco could remember was standing over him on the Hogwarts Express at the beginning of their sixth year and the sound of bone crunching under his heel as he broke Potter’s nose and left him to bleed. Even then, much to Draco’s fury at the time, Potter had still seemed strong. But not now—now, he seemed broken. And that, somehow, felt so much worse. 

Slowly, Potter seemed to pull himself together. He loosened the tight clasp of his hands around his knees and pushed himself up from the floor, straightening his glasses as he stood. Draco had been watching him in the mirror the whole while, eyes fixed on Potter’s reflection, but as Potter turned, he raised his gaze to meet Draco’s head-on. There was something defiant in his expression, as if daring Draco to mock him. But for the first time, Draco saw the fragility behind those green eyes, and all he really wanted to do was reach out to the other boy, to touch him or hold him or just let him know that he understood what it was like to wake up at night from the horror of the nightmares only to face the even worse reality of the memories. 

He opened his mouth, hoping the right words would come to him, but in the end nothing did, and the door closing as Potter left was the loudest sound between them that night. 

 

~

 

In the few hours Draco was able to sleep, he dreamt of the fire. The burning room in which his friends screamed was a familiar setting for his nightmares, but this time he did not dream of the terror on Crabbe’s face as the flames engulfed him or the scorch of ash in his throat as he realized he was about to die. Instead, he dreamt of a hand reaching through the shimmering heat, promising Draco safety. 

The next day, when Potter refused to meet his eyes, Draco focused on his hands. Did Potter dream about the fire too? Or was it something else, something much worse, that left him huddled cold and alone on the bathroom floor?

Draco wanted to say something, anything, to alleviate the stiff discomfort that seemed to have crept back between them overnight. But what could he say? Even as they turned in the description of their project and the details of their preliminary experiments to Professor Slughorn, Potter held himself at an exaggerated distance, unusually rigid in his posture and stubborn in his forward-facing gaze, studiously avoiding Draco’s frequent glances. His cursory pleasantries sounded brittle, to the point that even Slughorn seemed to notice something was off, and he was out the door of the classroom before Draco could even try to stop him. 

Being ignored by Potter, Draco quickly realized, was somehow even more frustrating than the constant, inexplicable attention that he had come to expect. The green eyes did not so much as blink in his direction at dinner that night, much to his annoyance, and yet when Pansy demanded to know what had Draco in such a mood, he couldn’t bring himself to tell her what had happened. He rarely kept secrets from Pansy, but this didn’t feel like his secret to share, no matter how much he might want her advice. If the situation were reversed and he had found out Potter had told Granger and Weasley about it, he would have felt utterly humiliated. Maybe they had been enemies once, but Draco owed Potter too much to do that to him now. 

That evening, Draco holed himself up in the library after dinner in an effort to give Potter some space, since it seemed his strategy of trying to force the Gryffindor into conversation wasn’t working. Isolating himself with a stack of books also seemed like a good way to refocus his attention on what mattered most: the potion. They had recently discovered that the addition of Bubotuber pus, while promising in its healing properties, seemed to react poorly with the Shrake spine over time, resulting in several shattered vials and a deeply unpleasant smell that, try as he might, Draco had not been able to remove from his best pair of dragonhide gloves. 

He was ready to settle in for a long night of research to try and find a method of stabilizing the potion, or perhaps a replacement for the Bubotuber pus, when the sound of a familiar voice drew his attention. 

“What’s up with you, anyway?” The Weasel’s voice carried from behind the shelves to Draco’s right, loud enough that it wasn’t quite muffled by the oppressive quiet that Draco was half certain Madam Pince charmed into the walls of the library itself. “You’ve been acting weird all day.” 

“What do you mean?” Potter’s response was much quieter, and Draco found himself leaning over in his chair to try and hear. “Everything’s fine.” 

It might have been because Draco knew exactly why Potter was _not_ fine that he could sense the defensiveness in his tone.

“That’s rubbish, don’t pretend,” the Weasel answered. Draco was on the very edge of his chair now, straining to listen. “Was it Malfoy? Did he do something?” 

Upon hearing his own name, Draco could no longer resist. As quietly as he could, he got up and moved over to the bookcase that stood between him and the subjects of his eavesdropping. He briefly considered casting a nonverbal Disillusionment Charm over himself, just in case, but decided against it. Even if he were caught, which he doubted he would be, he had a good enough chance at plausible deniability. It wasn’t as if the Gryffindors had a monopoly on using the library, after all, and he had been there first anyway. 

Peeking through a narrow gap between two books, he managed to glimpse the heads of the two Gryffindor boys and the bushy hair of the Granger girl, who was busy examining a series of leather-bound tomes on the opposite shelf. 

“ _No._ ” Draco ducked his head, his nose practically pressed against the books as he tried to see if Potter’s expression would betray the same flash of irritation that was in his voice. “I told you already, Ron, he’s not up to anything. We’re just working on a project.” 

Weasley’s brow furrowed, clearly disbelieving, but at that moment Granger stepped in. 

“Is it the nightmares again?” she asked, wild brown hair briefly invading Draco’s line of sight as she moved closer to the other two, arms laden with books. Draco wasn’t sure Potter would answer her, but after a moment, he responded with a small, terse nod. 

“Which dream was it this time?” Granger’s voice was gentle, but Draco wanted to hex her; he certainly would have if any of his friends dared ask him that question. Didn’t she know it was better to never bring it up, to never even think about the nightmares beyond those few minutes when you first woke up and couldn’t remember what was real and what was not? 

Draco didn’t have to strain this time to hear Potter’s response. “It’s all of them!” He had never heard Potter snap at his friends like that. Seeming to remember where he was and the lurking threat of Madam Pince, Potter dropped his voice as he added, “Just… leave it, okay?”

But the Muggleborn persisted. “Harry, you know we’re only trying to help…” 

Draco had to admit, if it weren’t for the frizzy mane of hair, he could almost have imagined that it was Pansy speaking, reminding him for the thousandth time that he should eat something. 

But unlike Draco, Potter didn’t tell his friends to shove it. 

“I know.” Potter forced a smile. “But it’s fine, really. Don’t worry about me.” 

Judging by the looks on Granger and Weasley’s faces and even the most basic understanding of Potter’s life, worrying about him was pretty much all they did. Draco wondered how many times they had had this conversation. Often enough, it seemed, that they realized when it was a lost cause because, despite Potter’s unconvincing reassurance, the red-haired Gryffindor gave a small shrug while Granger turned back to the shelves, shaking her head in a defeated sort of way.

“Alright, mate, whatever you say,” Weasley replied, clapping him on the shoulder. Then, with a quick glance towards Granger, he lowered his voice as he added, “But this thing with Malfoy… come off it, you really think he’s not up to anything?”

Draco rolled his eyes. He had never found the Weasel to be very bright, but these accusations seemed particularly unfounded—he had not done anything even remotely suspicious for at least a few months now, and certainly not since coming back to Hogwarts. 

“No, I really don’t.” Draco cursed silently to himself. With the way the Weasel was leaning forward, it was almost impossible now to see Potter’s expression. “I think he’s just… trying to move on. Like we all are.” 

Draco’s back was starting to cramp from the awkward way he had to bend over in order to see anything through the gap in the books, but he wasn’t about to move now. 

Weasley didn’t seem keen to let the subject drop. “Alright, sure, let’s say he is. I just don’t see why you have to be involved with it.” Draco tried to get a better angle, but Weasley’s back filled his view. All he could see of Potter was the edge of his right shoulder and a few particularly wild locks of hair. 

“He asked for my help and I said yes. It’s not a big deal.” 

That was a vast oversimplification of what had happened, in Draco’s opinion. Potter seemed to be omitting the part where he had all but forced his unnecessary potion-making assistance on Draco, although this only served to arouse Draco’s curiosity further. Potter had been maddeningly unforthcoming about his motivations when Draco had asked, but he had never imagined that there was something secret enough about it that Potter wouldn’t even tell his closest friends.

“I just know how you can be a bit…” Weasley hesitated. “Well, y’know… obsessive, when it comes to Malfoy.” 

Draco’s heart began to race. Obsessive? What did that mean? Surely nothing good, and yet… 

“It’s not like that.” There was anger in Potter’s voice now. Or was it frustration? As Draco watched, Potter sidestepped past his friend, moving right in Draco’s direction. Judging from the set of his jaw, he wasn’t happy with the way the conversation was going. “We’re not kids anymore, Ron. Things have changed. And if I’m able to—” 

At that moment, by some cosmic stroke of bad luck that Draco could only imagine was karma, Potter glanced at the shelves beside him, exactly where Draco was peering between the stacks. As quickly as he could, Draco ducked down, holding his breath to keep quiet. But even as he crouched on the floor, heart hammering in his ears, he felt certain that Potter had seen him. He glanced towards the table he had abandoned, wondering if it was too late to make a quiet dash back to his books and pretend that he hadn’t been eavesdropping when Potter and Weasley inevitably came to investigate. It was only a few yards away, maybe…

“…just thought I saw something, never mind. Where’s Hermione got to anyway?” 

A moment later, to Draco’s great relief and even greater confusion, he heard Potter and Weasley’s footsteps retreat in the opposite direction. He remained frozen against the bookshelf a moment longer, blood still pounding with adrenaline. Potter had seen him, Draco had no doubts about it, and more than that, he was sure that Potter had recognized him. So why, then, had Potter acted like he hadn’t? Was he that desperate to avoid talking to Draco? 

Any hopes Draco might have had of returning to his research were long gone. For the rest of the evening, in a way that was almost becoming a habit, his thoughts were wholly occupied with Potter. 

 

~

 

“She’s still at it.” 

Draco, who had been in the middle of trying to cast a very casual and definitely not practiced glance across the Great Hall to where a certain Gryffindor sat eating his breakfast, forced himself to focus his attention on his best friend. 

“Still?” Draco reached for the letter Pansy had tossed aside onto a plate of bacon, quickly scanning its contents. “Merlin’s balls, you would think she’d have run out of options by now. How many eligible pureblood bachelors in Britain can there be?” 

“Not enough, apparently, because if you’ll look at the picture she’s attached…” Pansy plucked small, butter-stained photograph out from where it had fallen onto a platter of toast, holding it out to Draco in the same way she might offer someone a particularly revolting insect. “She’s expanded her search to include Durmstrang students now.” 

Draco spared a glance at the picture of an unsmiling, square-jawed young man wearing heavy bloodred robes. “He’s certainly not the worst-looking one she’s found.” 

Pansy heaved a sigh. “Yes, well, count me lucky that at least my arranged marriage won’t be to a _troll_.” 

“Who’s a troll?” Blaise asked, grabbing the photo out of Draco’s hand as he sat down next to him. Goyle, having just taken the open seat next to Pansy, leaned across the table to try and get a look at the picture Blaise was now examining. “Well, I wouldn’t call him a _troll_ exactly, but with that jawline I suppose it’s an easy mistake to make.” 

Goyle sniggered as Blaise passed him the photo. 

“I still think you should’ve just gone with Theo Nott. He’s a bit of a tosser but at least you’d have nice-looking children.” Blaise began to serve himself toast, throwing a few slices onto Draco’s empty plate as he did. 

“At least this one’s not thirty years old,” Draco reasoned, begrudgingly nibbling at a piece of toast. “Do you remember when your mum was dead set on that one?”

“What are you talking about?” Blaise put a hand over his heart in mock outrage. “I loved that guy! Remember all those lovely letters he used to send?” Blaise adopted a simpering voice. “’Oh Pansy, my dearest, I simply cannot wait another minute until we are together! I long for the day I can take your precious and definitely-still-intact virginity!’” 

Goyle and Draco both laughed but Pansy seemed unamused. “I’m glad this is all such a great joke to you guys,” she snapped, snatching the photo back from Goyle and crumpling it in her fist. “It’s not like it’s my life or anything.”

“Oh come on, Pans, it's not like she can actually _force_ you to marry any of these imbeciles,” Draco soothed. 

Pansy gave a dramatic sniff. “No, all she can do is disinherit me.” To their mutual horror, Pansy’s lip began to quiver, looking for all the world like she was on the brink of tears as she stared morosely into her pumpkin juice. 

Draco was at a loss. He looked to Blaise, but the dark-skinned boy merely shrugged and directed his attention to his scrambled eggs. Goyle had an expression of mild panic on his face—he had never been good at dealing with other peoples’ emotions. _A lot of help they are,_ Draco thought, turning back to Pansy with a resigned sigh.

“Don’t worry, Pans.” He reached across the table to grab her hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “If your mum disinherits you, you can come live with me, alright? And, hell, I’ll marry you if it comes to it, although I don’t think that would be any less of a disaster, honestly.” 

In an instant, Pansy brightened. “Alright,” she agreed with a cheery smile, all signs of distress gone. “But just remember, you promised.” 

Draco could not help feeling that maybe he had been tricked, but Pansy was now reaching for her copy of _The Daily Prophet_ , which at least meant he was now free to return to his earlier pursuit: trying to look at Potter while pretending he wasn’t looking at Potter. 

It had been three days now since he and Potter had spoken. They’d exchanged a few stiff “hellos” in the common room here and there when courtesy called for it, but never more than that. Draco wasn’t even entirely sure who was avoiding who at this point. He had been careful to keep his distance ever since Potter caught him eavesdropping in the library, even though Potter had pretended he hadn’t, but Draco knew that they couldn’t keep this up forever. Soon enough, Slughorn would expect a report on the progress they had made with their potion, and if Potter had no idea what was going on, it would be all too apparent that they were no longer working together. Then Draco would really be in trouble. 

More than that, though, he missed having Potter around while he worked. There had been something pleasant about Potter’s presence that Draco couldn’t quite put his finger on, something almost comforting. They weren’t friends yet, exactly, but Draco had begun to believe that with enough time maybe they could be. But with each new day that passed without a word between them, Draco grew more and more worried that he had lost that chance for good. 

He was still staring across the hall hoping that Potter might look his way when a sharp intake of breath from Pansy drew his attention once more. 

“Pans?” 

Pansy’s gaze was fixed on something in the newspaper that he couldn’t see, her lips pressed tightly together in a way Draco knew could mean nothing good.

“What is it, Pans?” he repeated, dread beginning to coil in his stomach. They had caught Blaise and Goyle’s attention now, but as Goyle leaned over to see what Pansy was reading, she quickly tried to shove the paper out of sight. 

“It’s nothing, don’t worry about it,” she answered, not meeting Draco’s eyes. 

It was a terrible lie.

“Give me the paper, Pansy.” Draco held out his hand, voice deadly calm. She hesitated, glancing over at Blaise, and then with great reluctance handed it over. 

“Don’t get too worked up about it, you know how the _Prophet_ is…” 

Draco was barely listening. As soon as he unfolded the paper, he knew what she was talking about. It was on the second page, in the top left corner. The headline read, _“Saviour of the Wizarding World Partners with Accused Death Eater to Enter Prestigious Potions Competition.”_ Two photos accompanied the story: the first was of Potter, looking uncomfortable and yet still somehow noble as he accepted his Order of Merlin, First Class from Kingsley Shacklebolt. The second one was of Draco at his trial.

The dread in his stomach turned to ice. Somehow, he managed to keep his hands steady as he folded the paper and carefully set it aside. His friends were quiet, waiting to see what he would say, but Draco wasn’t looking at them. His eyes searched across the hall for the one person whose reaction mattered to him at that moment, and this time, he found Potter already looking back.

Abruptly, Draco stood. _Fuck The Daily Prophet_ , he thought, ignoring his friends’ looks of confusion as he strode down the length of the Slytherin table. _Fuck those half-witted writers. Fuck that asinine article. And fuck Harry Potter most of all._

Three days was more than enough. Draco was done with avoiding and being avoided by Potter. It was silly and childish and by Merlin, he was not about to let all of the stress and confusion Potter had caused him be for nothing just because of a few awkward moments. And if Potter decided that he didn’t want to be associated with a Death Eater anymore now that it was all over _The Daily Prophet_ , then he was going to have to tell Draco to his face. 

Draco was halfway to the Gryffindor table, muttering furiously under his breath as he went, when out of the corner of his eye he saw an unusual burst of shimmering blue light. There was a shout, followed quickly by an agonizing, blinding pain in his left side, and as Draco fell to the floor, all he could think was that it better not be Potter who came and saved him, because he really couldn’t afford any more personal debts.


	5. In His Dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter ended up being a lot longer than anticipated, but hopefully it's worth it for all the lovely ~sexual tension~. 
> 
> I'm going to attempt to start updating on a more regular schedule, maybe once a week even, although knowing me that's probably too ambitious lol. But I will definitely have the next chapter up soon!

In his dreams, nobody stopped him. 

In his dreams, Draco stormed across the Great Hall and seized Potter by the front of his robes, dragging him up off the bench as onlookers gasped. In his dreams, they stood nose to nose, those green eyes flashing as Draco pressed the tip of his wand to Potter’s chest.

In his dreams, deep in the safe, dark depths of unconsciousness, Draco’s anger twisted on his tongue until _“Fuck you, Potter”_ began to sound like _“Fuck me, Potter.”_

In his dreams, furious curses turned to desperate pleas, ones that Potter answered all too willingly. 

“Why are you here, anyway? You’ve been avoiding Draco for days now, I don’t understand—” 

Through the fog of sleep, the sharp, incongruous voice cut across Draco’s fantasy like a knife. 

“Me? What about _him?_ ” another voice insisted. “Just yesterday he took a turn down a staircase that I happen to know leads to a dead end, just to avoid me!” 

The voices were quite annoying. How dare they interrupt him when he was so pleasantly occupied? Slowly, Draco blinked his eyes open, struggling in his drowsy state to try and make sense of his surroundings. The long, high-ceilinged room was lined with narrow beds dressed in clean white sheets, all of which were empty except for the one Draco currently occupied. Even with the late afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows, the place had a cold, sterile feeling about it. _The Hospital Wing,_ his bleary mind supplied, reluctantly letting go of the lingering visions of bare skin and frantic kissing from his dreams in order to focus on the two people who sat on opposite sides of his bed, paying him no attention as they quarrelled. 

“Well you’re both being idiots then! But in any case, you really don’t have to—” 

“Gods, Pansy, your voice could wake the dead.” Draco squinted against the brightness of the room as he looked at the dark-haired Slytherin girl, who gave a very visible start upon hearing him speak. “I’m not dead, am I?” 

Pansy’s expression quickly shifted from one of shock to relief. 

“Oh, thank Merlin,” she cried, flinging herself at him in what Draco thought was a thoroughly overdramatic fashion. “You’re alright! Oh, I was so worried!” 

As she smothered him with a hug, Draco felt a throb of pain through his ribcage, but he ignored it, allowing her a moment to fuss. 

“Calm down, Pans,” he grumbled, trying to extricate himself from her embrace as the pain in his side became too much to bear. “I’m not dead yet, you just said it yourself. Now get off, will you? You’re hurting me.” 

Mercifully, Pansy released him, although the look of concern on her face remained. “You’re in pain?” she fretted, taking hold of his left hand, which rested limply against the bedcovers. It was odd, Draco noticed, but he could not quite feel his fingers as she interlaced them with hers. “Should I get Madam Pomfrey?” 

Draco’s eyes flickered over to the boy who had sat quiet as Pansy worried over him. Draco had not dared look over until that moment, afraid that the explicit content of his dreams would be written all over his face for the Gryffindor to see, and perhaps even more afraid that, if he looked at Potter just then, the outrageous fantasies concocted in his sleep would begin to feel like real desires. 

Potter’s chair was set close to the bed, and although he was leaned back in his seat now, Draco wondered if maybe he had propped his arms on the bed while Draco slept, or if he had even reached out to touch Draco’s hand, as Pansy did. The thought made his stomach twist. He avoided Potter’s eyes, hoping that maybe, if he forced himself to focus on something else, he could dispel the indecent images that plagued him. But staring at Potter’s hands, clasped loosely in his lap, proved to be no better—Draco could not stop picturing how the Potter of his dreams had used those wicked fingers to torment him into bliss. 

Ashamed, Draco shook the thoughts away and forced himself to raise his gaze. Despite how vehemently he had been arguing with Pansy only moments ago, Potter looked calm now, although the green of his eyes was darkened by an emotion Draco couldn’t identify. 

“I couldn’t get him to leave,” Pansy explained, shooting Potter a harassed look. Potter opened his mouth as if to respond, but no sound came out, and a moment later he closed it, never taking his eyes off of Draco. 

Draco wasn’t sure what to say. He thought that perhaps Pansy expected him to tell Potter to leave, or demand to know why he was there, but something made Draco hesitate. Both Potter and Pansy were staring at him, waiting, but Draco’s mind was whirling. He hardly knew why he was in the Hospital Wing in the first place, let alone why Potter might be sitting at his bedside; it was too much to take in at once, and he could hardly decide which question to ask first. Not to mention, the pain in his ribs was killing him. “Erm, what—?” 

“Ah, Mr. Malfoy.” The timely arrival of Madam Pomfrey came as a tremendous relief. “I am glad to see you awake, although I cannot say I’m surprised, what with all this noise,” the matronly witch admonished as she motioned Pansy out of her way with an impatient gesture. She leaned over the bed to examine Draco’s left side, which for the first time he noticed was rather heavily bandaged. “Ms. Parkinson, Mr. Potter, you both should know better than to raise your voices here, of all places. Next time, take your bickering outside.” 

Pansy and Potter both nodded, looking appropriately chagrined, but Madam Pomfrey was now too busy muttering a series of spells over Draco’s bandaged ribs to notice. At first, the pain seemed to worsen as a powerful burning sensation spread up to his shoulder and down his arm, and Draco had to bite his tongue to keep from crying out. But after a few moments, the pain began to dull, replaced by a mild prickling sensation. Madam Pomfrey stepped back, her lips thin. 

“As I suspected,” she murmured, tucking her wand back into the pocket of her robes. 

“What is ‘as you suspected’?” Draco demanded, looking from Madam Pomfrey to Pansy and then finally to Potter. Although he had been too distracted when he first awoke to give much thought to the pain in his ribs and the curious lack of feeling in his left arm, he was now acutely aware both that something might be very wrong and that, for some reason, nobody seemed to be offering any explanation. “Is anyone going to tell me what happened? Why am I here?” 

“You don’t remember?” Pansy asked, eyebrows furrowing as she leaned forward to take his hand once more. His fingers still felt numb. “You were hexed, in the Great Hall. Remember?”

Draco did remember then. He closed his eyes, thinking back to that flash of blue light with a growing sense of unease. He recalled the excruciating pain, much sharper then than it was now, but the memory that caused him the most distress was of a dark-haired figure leaning over him as he lay on the stone floor, saying his name over and over again. Someone with round glasses and very green eyes.

Before Draco could ask the question ready on his tongue, they were interrupted by the arrival of Professor McGonagall. The Headmistress’s expression was stony as she strode through the doors of the Hospital Wing, although upon noticing that Draco was awake, the firm set of her lips seemed to soften slightly. 

“Mr. Malfoy,” she began, clasping her hands behind her back as she came to stand at the end of his bed, “It is good to see you looking alert. How are you feeling?” 

“Well enough,” Draco answered, which was more or less true—the pain in his side was certainly not the worst he had endured. As if to verify his response, McGonagall glanced at Madam Pomfrey, who gave a small, terse nod. 

“That is quite a relief.” Everyone’s immense relief was beginning to get on Draco’s nerves, seeing as no one had yet bothered to explain why they were all so concerned in the first place. How bad could this curse have been, exactly? “I’m sure you have a few questions.” 

It was very, very difficult to keep the sarcasm from his voice. “A few.” 

“Well, I think I might have some answers for you. First of all, you should know what we have identified the person who attacked you—it was a third year Hufflepuff, named Miranda McKinnon. Do you know her?” 

Draco shook his head.

“According to her account of the event, she saw you crossing the hall looking quite agitated, and was under the impression that you were on your way to attack Mr. Potter.”

“I was,” Draco muttered. He spoke quietly enough that McGonagall didn’t seem to hear, although Pansy’s hand tightened warningly around his, and he noticed that Potter appeared to be hiding a grin. 

“Seeing as Mr. Potter was the first to rush to your aid,” McGonagall looked over at the Gryffindor, who was picking at his nails, “I think I can presume that was not the case.”

 _The first to rush to his aid._ How humiliating, that Potter should once again be the one to act as his saviour. Draco knew his face was red, both from shame and anger, but more curiously, so was Potter’s. He averted his eyes as Draco glanced over at him, cheeks flushed as if embarrassed that by the fact that he had rushed to Draco’s side. 

_Maybe he regrets helping someone like you_ , the cruel voice in Draco’s mind whispered. 

McGonagall continued to regard them both, eyebrows raised, and after a moment, Draco realized she expected a response. 

“I—”

“No, that wasn’t the case,” Potter cut him off. “Malfoy wasn’t going to attack me.” 

Draco stared. Potter’s voice was clear and firm, leaving no room for doubt. McGonagall nodded, content with this assurance, but Draco found himself irked. How could Potter be so sure that Draco wouldn’t have attacked him? Draco had done it before, after all.

“In any case, Ms. McKinnon attempted a spell well above her years,” McGonagall continued. “It was not as strong of a curse as it could have been, fortunately, but the results were also much less predictable. We believe she was attempting a kind of petrifying curse, meant to stop you from moving. However…” She looked over at Madam Pomfrey, lips pursed.

“When the curse hit you, it shattered three of your ribs and petrified the surrounding tissue,” Madam Pomfrey explained, gesturing at Draco’s bandaged chest. “I’ve given you a healthy dose of Skele-Gro, which seems to have done most of the work mending your ribs, but the petrified muscle will require a Mandrake draught. Professor Sprout and Professor Slughorn are working on it now, but you’ll likely be here for another day or so until it’s ready.” 

_Petrified?_ Draco brought his right hand up to examine the aching area of his ribcage, ignoring the pain as he pressed his fingers gingerly along his side. Even through the stiffness of the bandages, he could tell that the skin underneath was hard as stone. At least this explained the numbness in his left arm—the muscles all the way up to his shoulder were completely paralyzed. 

“Madam Pomfrey has assured me that you will make a full recovery.” The Headmistress gave him a tight smile. “And Ms. McKinnon will receive appropriate punishment.” 

Draco’s stomach turned. _Appropriate punishment…_

Only months ago, “appropriate punishment” would have meant the Cruciatus Curse, administered either by the Carrows themselves or by a student under duress. A student like him, threatened with his own torture and that of his family. Bile rose in his throat as he remembered standing over a boy of no more than fourteen—perhaps even a third year Hufflepuff like Miranda McKinnon—and raising his wand, hand shaking as Amycus Carrow hissed in his ear all the things that could happen to Draco’s mother if he didn’t obey. He remembered the screams. 

He was going to be sick, just as he was then. He was going to fall to his knees, crying and shaking, and still the screams wouldn’t stop, they wouldn’t stop… 

“Draco?” Pansy whispered, clutching his hand so tightly that even with the petrification, Draco could feel the sharp sting of her nails digging into his skin. Her voice and the grounding touch were enough to bring him back to the present. _You’re in the Hospital Wing_ , he reminded himself, _and no one is screaming._

He pushed down the wave of nausea that had almost threatened to overcome him, looking at McGonagall with a steady gaze as he said, “I don’t want her to be punished. The McKinnon girl, I mean. It was just a mistake.” 

Draco could feel that both Pansy and Potter were staring at him, but he did not look away from the Headmistress. 

“I will take that into consideration,” McGonagall said after a long moment, a curious look in her eye. “But hexing other students is never allowed. She will at the very least receive several weeks of detention with her Head of House.” 

Draco breathed a silent sigh of relief. At one point in his life, detention might have seemed like the worst punishment imaginable, but now, it sounded like a gift. Maybe Miranda McKinnon had harboured some malicious intent when she pointed her wand at him; maybe she hated him for being a Death Eater and had wanted to watch him suffer. Or maybe she was just a scared little girl who had seen and endured far too much and was simply trying to do what she thought was right. It didn’t matter. Maybe it wasn’t much, but Draco couldn’t stand to think that he was the reason for any more punishment. 

“Get some rest, Mr. Malfoy,” McGonagall advised. “I will inform your Professors of your absence for the next few days.” With a nod towards Pansy and Potter, McGonagall took her leave. 

“The Headmistress is right,” Madam Pomfrey agreed, shooting pointed looks at the two students sitting on either side of Draco’s bed. “Rest is the best medicine. I will give you all another few minutes, but then Mr. Malfoy needs his sleep.” 

Pansy rolled her eyes as Madam Pomfrey disappeared back into her office. “That woman always assumes the worst of everyone. What does she think, we’re going to refuse to let you sleep or something? 

“To be fair, you were the one who woke me up in the first place,” Draco pointed out. “You’re quite shrill.” 

Pansy pouted. “My voice isn’t _shrill_ , it’s feminine. But if you’re really so bothered, I can take my shrill voice elsewhere.” She looked over at Potter, who had so far showed no signs of leaving, a wicked glint in her eyes. “I’m sure you and _Mr. Potter_ have plenty to talk about anyway.” 

Draco felt a flash of panic. This was a completely different scenario than he had imagined when he stormed across the Great Hall, intent on confronting Potter. In that moment, he had felt like the one in control. But now, lying prone in a hospital bed after Potter had come to his aid in front of half the school like the storybook hero everyone imagined him to be, Draco felt wholly unprepared. 

He attempted to grip Pansy’s hand, which was still wrapped around his own, but the petrified muscles in his side prevented him from doing anything more than twitching his fingers. Pansy smirked and pulled her hand away.

“Pansy…” he warned, trying to convey with his eyes what he couldn’t say out loud. What did she think she was playing at? Potter sat up in his chair, watching with interest as Pansy patted Draco’s hand and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, pointedly ignoring his threatening glower. 

“Don’t get him too worked up, Potter, or Madam Pomfrey will have your head,” she said with a breezy wave. Draco glared at her back as she departed, her shiny dark hair seeming to laugh at him as it disappeared beyond the doors of the Hospital Wing, leaving him alone with Potter.

Draco sighed. It didn’t seem like there was any chance of avoiding this conversation now that Pansy had so kindly abandoned him. He tried to push himself up into a sitting position, hoping that might help him regain some sense of dignity, but with only one functional arm and the heavy weight of his petrified ribcage, it proved to be quite a challenge. 

After a few minutes of struggling, Potter spoke up. “Let me help,” he offered, reaching out a hand to adjust Draco’s pillows.

“I don’t need your help,” Draco growled, jerking the pillow away from Potter’s grasp. Potter drew back, watching silently as Draco managed to shove himself up and prop a pillow behind his back. It took more effort than Draco cared to admit, and his side was throbbing by the time he finally settled into a half-reclined position. 

He narrowed his eyes at the Gryffindor, wincing only a little as he pressed his hand against his aching ribs. “Why are you here, Potter?”

“Well, before you were hexed, I sort of got the impression you wanted to talk to me, or yell at me, or something.” A small smiled played on Potter’s lips. “You weren’t going to attack me, were you? I would hate to think I lied to Professor McGonagall.”

Draco scowled. “I seriously considered it.” 

This response only seemed to amuse Potter more. 

“What are you grinning about?” Draco snapped. “Even that little Hufflepuff girl thought I was going to curse you!” 

Potter shrugged. “I guess it’s a good thing I know better, then.” He was no longer smiling, but the assurance with which he spoke annoyed Draco just as much as when he had told McGonagall that Draco hadn’t intended to attack him. _What does he mean, he knows better? He doesn’t know anything about me. I could’ve cursed him into oblivion, if I really wanted to._ “So, are you going to tell me what got your knickers in such a twist?” 

Draco thought back to the moments just before the curse had hit him. He knew he had been furious, but he could no longer summon the kind of blood-boiling anger that had driven him then. What exactly had he wanted to say to Potter?

 _Fuck me, Potter, oh please, fuck me._

The words sprang into his mind unbidden, the phrase he had repeated over and over in his dream. He flushed as the images he had tried to suppress returned, all of which involved the black-haired boy currently sitting beside him, albeit in much more compromising positions. As much as he wanted to tear his gaze away, he could not help but stare at the breadth of Potter’s shoulders, the exposed skin of his neck, the curve of his mouth…

Draco swallowed. His unconscious had replicated the reality with astounding accuracy. 

“Come on, out with it, Malfoy.” Draco could not focus on what Potter was saying. At the sound of his name, all he could think of was what it would feel like whispered against his skin. “What is it?” 

Potter leaned forward so that his elbows were resting on his knees, his expression expectant. Draco knew he should say something, anything, but his mouth was far too dry, and he was horrified to realize that, beneath the blankets, he was hard. 

“I, um.” Draco cleared his throat, subtly attempting to bunch the blankets up further around his waist. He would rather die right then and there than have Potter become aware of his current predicament. “I wanted to tell you to stop being such a _child_ and quit avoiding me so we can get back to work on our potion.”

Potter’s eyebrows raised. “I thought you didn’t need my help.” 

“Th-that’s—that is beside the point, Potter,” Draco stuttered. “Slughorn is going to want to hear from both of us soon enough, and it’ll be my neck on the line if you look incompetent.” 

A slow grin crept across Potter’s face. “That’s a terrible excuse, and you know it. Just admit it, Malfoy, you miss working with me, don’t you?” 

Draco’s scowl returned. “Hardly. I’m just tired of your pathetic attempts to pretend you don’t see me every time we pass in the hallway, as if catching you snivelling in a bathroom wasn’t pitiful enough.” 

He was satisfied to see that he had managed to wipe the smirk from Potter’s lips. “I’m the pathetic one?” Potter bit back, eyes flashing. “Tell me, Malfoy, do you eavesdrop on everyone, or is it just me that you get off spying on? 

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Draco sneered. “As I heard it, even the Weasel knows that _you’re_ the one who’s obsessed with _me_.” 

Potter flushed red. Draco’s sneer turned into a derisive laugh. 

“It’s true, isn’t it?” Draco clung to the cruel taunts like a drowning man reaching for a life raft in a storm, desperate to hold on to anything that would rescue him from the appalling desire he felt. “I thought the Weasel must be exaggerating, but you are obsessed, aren’t you? Still stalking me, just like you always have, trying to find out what terrible, evil things I must be up to. That’s why you want—” 

Potter stood suddenly, the chair scraping against the floor as it was shoved back. 

“You don’t know what I want.” 

Though shorter than Draco when they were on equal footing, Potter seemed to tower now as he stood over the bed. His hands had come to rest against the sheets only centimetres from where Draco’s arm lay, and there was something dangerous in his gaze that sent a thrill down Draco’s spine. 

“Then tell me, Potter,” Draco’s voice was hoarse, barely a whisper, “What do you want?” 

Potter said nothing, only leaned forward slightly, hands pressing into the sheets. He was close enough now that Draco could smell the warm, woodsy scent of his cologne, and he realized that it would be all too simple, if he wanted, to push himself up, just a little bit, and meet Potter’s lips with his own. 

It was ridiculous to even consider it, absolute lunacy. But some wild urge drove him, and, forgetting his injuries, he attempted to use both of his arms to support himself as he moved to close the distance between them. Draco could almost feel the heat of Potter’s breath on his lips when his left arm collapsed under him, and he cried out as he fell back against the bed, pain lancing through his ribs.

At the sound of his shout, Madam Pomfrey was out the door of her office in an instant. Immediately, Potter pulled away, stepping back from the bed as the matron rushed over.

“Are you alright, Mr. Malfoy? More pain potion, perhaps?” 

As Madam Pomfrey bustled about mixing a dose of pain potion into his goblet of water, Draco studied Potter. The Gryffindor’s expression was neutral, arms held carefully behind his back as if they had never so much as reached towards Draco’s bed, but his appearance of composure was betrayed by the colour in his cheeks and the lingering heat in his eyes. Draco only tore his gaze away when Madam Pomfrey forced the goblet into his hand, watching to make sure he downed every last drop.

“I think it best that you leave now, Mr. Potter.” Although she didn’t so much as look at the Gryffindor when she spoke, her tone left no room for debate. Draco felt a stab of disappointment. 

“Right,” Potter replied, already moving towards the door. As their eyes met one last time, Potter flashed him a small smile. “See you later, Malfoy.” 

Draco said nothing as Potter left. The pain in his side was beginning to recede, replaced by a heavy, drowsy feeling. It might have been his imagination, but the scent of spice and cedarwood seemed to linger. 

How cruel Potter was, Draco thought, to provoke him with those suggestive words and that heated look—that impossible look, as if he might have actually _wanted_ Draco. Thank Merlin, really, that Madam Pomfrey had interrupted them, or else who knew what regrettable things might have happened? He was foolish to have misjudged Potter’s intentions, and even more foolish to have nearly given in to the absurd urge to lean in and kiss him. 

But in his dreams, nobody stopped him.


	6. No Use Crying Over Spilled Potion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Potions theory is fascinating to me and I spent way way too much time researching potions ingredients for this chapter, even though I honestly could have just made it all up. That's my only excuse for why it took me two weeks to write 😆
> 
> As always, thank you for all your comments and kudos!! I love hearing what people think of the story so far.

It took three days before the Mandrake draught was ready, although Draco would swear it was much longer. Partial petrification, as it turned out, might as well have been his own personal form of torture. With the upper left side of his torso turned to stone, accomplishing almost anything beyond lying quietly in his bed proved to be either painful, degrading, or both at once, given the level of assistance he required to even so much as use the bathroom. After one attempt to get out of bed on his own resulted in a rather nasty fall, Madam Pomfrey kept such a close eye on him that Draco soon began to feel more like a prisoner than a patient. 

And if the constant physical pain, crushing boredom, and unspeakable vulnerability of having to depend on other people were not enough, Draco was also forced to deal with the mental torment induced by his last encounter with Potter. Memories of what could only be described as their almost-kiss plagued his every waking thought. Sleep, unfortunately, was no safer: his brain seemed determined to cast Potter as the leading role in every one of his fantasies, no matter how much Draco wished otherwise. 

It didn’t help that, after the first day, Potter continued to visit each afternoon. He always had some small excuse—to bring Draco an assignment or to convey a message from Slughorn—but he tended to linger longer than was necessary, his glances heavy with a significance that Draco refused to acknowledge. Between Madam Pomfrey’s watchful eye and Pansy, Blaise, and Goyle’s frequent presence, their conversations never lasted more than five minutes and consisted only of banal pleasantries and the occasional half-hearted insult. Yet every time Potter left, Draco felt a strange twinge of disappointment. He told himself that it didn’t mean anything, and that it wasn’t worth worrying over, but it would be much easier to convince himself of that if he didn’t have so much damn free time in which to obsess over it.

He was on the verge of losing his mind by the time Madam Pomfrey arrived with the restorative draught, and Pansy had to restrain him from snatching it right out of the matron’s hand in his impatience. As soon as the heavy weight in his left side began to lessen and he regained feeling in his arm, he was on his feet and reaching for his clothes, much to Madam Pomfrey’s distress. When she tried to insist that he stay just another few hours to ensure there were no lasting effects from the curse, Draco flat-out refused; he could not stomach another minute trapped in that hospital bed. 

But Madam Pomfrey put up a fight, and it was only after making both him and Pansy swear that he would return the minute he felt anything amiss that she officially released him, although she was still shaking her head as she left him to change. 

“You really should take it easy for a bit.” Pansy’s voice came from the other side of the privacy curtain as Draco dressed. He had managed to negotiate with Madam Pomfrey to wear his own pyjamas rather than the abhorrent hospital gown she had first offered him, but after almost four days, it was nice to finally put on a pair of real trousers again. “Or for tonight, at least.”

Draco drew back the curtain. With Madam Pomfrey gone, there was no need for privacy; Pansy had seen him in various stages of undress too many times to count. 

“I’ve been taking it easy for three and a half days,” he told her as he pulled on his shirt. “Even I have my limits on how many hours I can spend reading alone in bed.” 

Pansy pushed herself up from the chair that she had made her home over the last few days. “I’m not remanding you to your room or anything,” she said, reaching for his discarded pyjamas. Draco winced as he watched her shove them unceremoniously into his bookbag. “I just don’t want to end up right back here tomorrow morning, alright?” 

Draco’s more fastidious side got the better of him and he abandoned his shirt buttoning in order to save his pyjamas from Pansy’s clutches. All too familiar with his compulsive neatness, Pansy said nothing, but Draco caught her rolling her eyes as he went about carefully folding each article of clothing. 

“Oh, I almost forgot…” 

Pansy sifted through her bookbag for a moment before pulling out a rather crumpled letter. When she held it out to him, Draco could see that it was sealed with the Malfoy family crest. 

“It came for you this morning,” she explained. 

Draco raised an eyebrow at her as he took it. “Pericles just left it with you, did he?” 

“Pericles likes me better than you.” 

“Well, Pericles is a treacherous bastard, isn’t he?”

“Family loyalty doesn’t mean a whole lot to owls, I don’t think.” 

“Well, it should,” Draco muttered as he slit open the wax seal and scanned his mother’s letter. He knew he probably should have written to her sooner to tell her about the potions competition, and about working with Potter, but he had hardly expected it to make the papers. And then, well… 

“Are you going to tell her about what happened with the attack?” 

Draco shook his head. “Gods, no.” His mother had enough on her plate to worry about. Even though her house arrest had been lifted after Potter spoke on her behalf at her trial, just as he had at Draco’s, she hardly ever left the manor. She seemed permanently on edge these days, always tense and jumpy, and with Lucius locked up in Azkaban for another three years, the only people she spoke to anymore were Draco and the family house elves.

As her only child, she had always worried over Draco more than was perhaps necessary, but her fretting had reached new levels ever since Draco had told her he planned to return to Hogwarts. It was understandable, of course, but now that he was gone, he could only imagine how frayed her nerves must be, alone in the silence of that old house, still so heavy with nightmares. Draco wasn’t about to add to her anxiety, not over a few shattered ribs and some minor petrification. 

“She’d probably want to know.” 

“Yeah, and then what?” Draco folded up the letter, tucking it away in his bookbag along with his neatly folded pyjamas. “She’d be forcing me come home the very next day.” 

He grabbed a pile of his books from the bedside table and attempted to pack them on top of his pyjamas, but in his boredom over the past few days, he’d demanded that Pansy bring him so many that there was simply no way for all of them to fit. 

“I suppose…”

At Pansy’s response, Draco looked up. She was chewing her lip and fiddling with the strap of her bookbag, staring off in the distance as if deep in thought. Draco’s eyes narrowed. 

“Don’t you dare go writing to her behind my back,” he warned, knowing all too well what she was considering. When Pansy didn’t answer, he continued to glare at her until she finally gave a sigh of resignation.

“Fine, fine, I won’t,” she promised, waving off his threatening stare. “If you don’t hurry up, though, we’re going to miss dinner.” 

Draco stuffed another book into his bag, which was now straining at the seams. “I’m not hungry.” 

“I don’t care. You’ll eat something anyway.” 

Draco slung his bookbag over his shoulder and grabbed the three volumes he hadn’t managed to fit in with the others, thrusting them into Pansy’s surprised hands. 

“What do I look like, a house elf?” she demanded, arms wobbling under the weight of the texts. One of the drawbacks of Draco’s penchant for advanced potions theory was that the books tended to be on the heavier side.

“I’m supposed to be taking it easy, remember?” Draco smirked, stepping past her before she could protest any further. He could hear Pansy grumbling under her breath as he headed towards the door, but when he realized that she wasn’t following him, he turned back. 

“If those are too heavy for you, maybe we should just go back to the dorms,” he suggested, watching with amusement as she attempted to cram the books into her own bag.

Pansy scowled. “You’re going to dinner whether you like it or not.” 

Somehow, she managed to fit one book into her bag, but when she continued to struggle with the others, Draco gave in and went to take back the remaining books from her arms. 

“Come on, let’s go, then.” 

Pansy sighed in relief as she was freed of the weight of the last two volumes. Then, eyeing his collar, she advised, “You should probably do up the rest of your buttons first.”

Draco glanced down, realizing for the first time that half his chest was still exposed. Somewhere along the line, he had completely forgotten to finish buttoning up his shirt. 

“Too scandalous for dinner in the Great Hall?” he joked, balancing the books on his hip as he started to do up the rest of the buttons.

“Just a bit.” Pansy glanced over his shoulder, then added, “You also might want to be fully dressed before you talk to Potter.” 

Draco found this to be a very odd response. “Potter? Why would I be talking to Potter half-dressed?” 

Pansy gestured behind him, grinning. “Maybe because he’s right over there.” 

Draco spun around, the books slipping from his arms and hitting the floor with a dull thud. Any hope he might have had that Pansy was joking quickly evaporated. There, indeed, was Potter, standing near the doors of the Hospital Wing and watching them both with mild amusement. As Draco turned, Potter’s eyes flickered down, lingering on the pale skin of Draco’s exposed collarbones. 

Draco flushed, his fingers clumsy as he quickly tried to do up the rest of the buttons. 

“I’m getting tired of asking why you’re always here, Potter.” Draco did not look up as he spoke, hoping that his cold tone would be enough to mask his embarrassment. 

Potter crossed the room to where Pansy and Draco stood. “I ran into Slughorn at dinner,” he explained, bending down to pick up the books that Draco had dropped. “He told me that he finished the Mandrake draught earlier this afternoon and had just left it with Madam Pomfrey. I figured that meant you were probably being discharged about now.” 

“Well, you figured correctly.” Draco held out his hands for the books, but Potter made no move to return them. 

“Shouldn’t you be taking it easy for a while?” Potter asked, glancing at the only recently unpetrified side of Draco’s chest. Pansy snickered.

“That seems to be the general consensus, yes,” Draco snapped, seizing hold of the books in Potter’s hands. “But I’m not a complete _invalid_ , I can carry my own damn books.” 

Potter let him yank the books away without resistance. 

“Is there something you want?” Draco demanded, his voice faltering slightly on the last word. He wondered if Potter would realize how it echoed his question from the other night, the one Draco had asked as Potter leaned over him, eyes wild.

 _Tell me, Potter, what do you want?_

Potter ran a nervous hand through his hair. “I, er…” He glanced at Pansy. “I wanted to know when you thought we should get back to work on the potion. If you, er, still wanted to, that is.” 

A weight that Draco had not even realized he was carrying seemed to lift. He had already resolved that his very fleeting desire to lean in and kiss Potter had been a moment of pure insanity brought on by the trauma of the attack and the effects of too much pain potion. But what was worse, Draco felt almost certain that Potter had never intended to kiss him in the first place, and somehow in his addled state of mind he had misconstrued a completely innocent situation. Which meant it was quite possible that Potter now thought—mistakenly, of course—that Draco _did_ want to kiss him, and was repulsed by the idea. 

Add that to the fact that the _The Daily Prophet_ had just broadcast to the world that the Chosen One was spending his time with a known Death Eater and Draco had half expected Potter to say he wanted to put as much distance as possible between them from now on, or at the very least to mock him for his humiliating mistake. Draco could not even begin to comprehend why Potter had continued to visit him in the Hospital Wing; his only possible explanation was that maybe Potter wanted to tell him off to his face and was just waiting for the right moment to do it. 

And yet here Potter was, asking when they could get back to work. Perhaps the situation was not so dire as Draco had thought. 

“Don’t be ridiculous, of course I still want to,” Draco said brusquely. Relieved as he was that Potter still wanted to work with him, he wasn’t about to give the Gryffindor any reason to think he was _excited_ about it or anything. “We’re behind as it is. We should get to work as soon as possible.” 

Potter’s eyes brightened. “How about tonight?” 

“He can’t tonight,” Pansy interjected, stepping forward to place a protective hand on Draco’s arm. “He still needs to eat dinner, and he promised Madam Pomfrey he’d spend the night resting.” 

Draco was getting very tired of being told what he could and could not do. “I didn’t promise that I would _rest_ , I promised I would take it easy, and it’s not as if brewing potions with Potter is particularly strenuous.” 

Pansy pursed her lips and levelled him with a glare. She looked rather like his mother when she did that, which was enough to make him yield. 

“Fine, fine, not tonight.” He shook his head in exasperation. Between her and Madam Pomfrey, you would think he was still eleven years old. Turning his attention back to Potter, he said, “I have some correspondence I need to take care of anyway.” Pansy had reminded him of his mother’s letter, and he knew it was probably best to respond soon before she began to worry too much. 

“How about tomorrow after lunch?” Potter suggested. “It’s Saturday, so we can work all afternoon.” 

“Alright, tomorrow, then,” Draco answered. Sensing Pansy’s imperious gaze, he begrudgingly added, “And we will _take it easy_.” 

He was starting to hate the phrase “take it easy,” but it seemed to appease Pansy. 

“You hear that, Potter?” She raised her eyebrows, a grin playing at the corners of her lips. “No _overstimulation_ for Draco, okay?” 

The suggestiveness in her tone was enough to make Draco’s jaw drop. He wanted to protest her offensive statement in some way, but that would require acknowledging the implication, which Draco could not bring himself to do. 

Potter looked similarly taken aback, his green eyes widening, but after a moment, he smiled. 

“Of course not,” Potter agreed. His eyes flickered over to meet Draco’s, and something in that look and the lowness of his voice made Draco shiver.

 _Maybe…_

“Right, now that we’ve solved all that, can we go eat?” 

As much as Draco wanted to strangle Pansy right then for her shameless insinuations, and little though he felt like eating, he jumped at her question. 

_Maybe…_

“Yes, let’s go.” He grabbed hold of Pansy’s arm and all but dragged her towards the door, sparing only the briefest of glances over his shoulder at the dark-haired Gryffindor. 

“Tomorrow, Potter,” he called out. “Don’t be late.” 

He didn’t know if Potter replied; he wasn’t listening anymore. A wild idea was buzzing in his head, loud and insistent and outrageous enough to drown out all else, even his annoyance at Pansy. 

_Maybe it wasn’t a mistake,_ a new voice, a much gentler voice, echoed in his mind. _Maybe he wanted to kiss you too._

 

~

 

“What are you adding now?” 

“Mandrake root.” Draco held out a handful of the gnarled objects for Potter to examine before tipping a portion of them into the cauldron. At first, nothing happened, but after three stirs, the potion fizzed and darkened to a rich chestnut colour. 

“Why Mandrake root?” 

Draco passed the stirring rod to Potter. “I think it might help amplify the transfigurative properties of the potion,” he explained, making note of the ingredient’s effects in the small leather-bound journal balanced on his knee. “I was inspired by my recent brush with petrification. We’re just lucky Slughorn still had some mature Mandrakes left over.” 

Potter continued to stir in slow clockwise circles, careful to keep the glass rod angled at exactly 90 degrees. It was the most neutral form of potion agitation, and the one Draco had always told him to default to when they tested new ingredients. Usually, Draco had to remind him at least twice to correct his angle or reduce his speed, but he was impressed to see that Potter needed no instruction today. 

They were sitting cross-legged on the floor of the potions room, with the cauldron set up between them, which was Potter’s idea of “taking it easy.” Draco had never expected him to take Pansy’s directive so seriously, but Potter had been adamant. The suggestion had seemed silly, at first—how was sitting on the floor really that different from sitting at the table? But Potter had argued that when they worked at the table, Draco never actually sat still; he always ended up on his feet after a few minutes, pacing up and down the room every time he got frustrated, which was often. 

Draco had been so caught off guard by Potter’s familiarity with his potion-making habits that he hadn’t been able to think of a comeback, and so in the end they had pushed back the tables and spread out their supplies and ingredients on the stone floor. If Potter found it uncomfortable that they were sitting almost knee-to-knee, he made no indication of it. His nonchalance about what had happened—or almost happened—between them should have been a source of relief, considering how anxious Draco was to put the whole thing behind them. But even so, he couldn’t help the slight quickening of his pulse every time Potter leaned forward over the cauldron, his mind automatically calculating the distance left between them. 

“Does it seem like it’s working?” Potter frowned at the potion. His hair really needed a trim, Draco thought; the dark locks kept falling into his eyes in a distracting way, and Draco itched to push them back from his face.

“Well, it’s not exploding, so that’s a start.” Draco reached for an empty vial, filling it with a small quantity of the brown-coloured concoction. “Let’s test it.” 

He gestured for Potter to pass him what appeared to be a small stack of flesh-coloured fabric that he had set out earlier, but which were actually pieces of Mr. Mulpepper’s Multi-Purpose Synthetic Skin. While it was next to impossible to truly replicate a scar caused by dark magic, they had decided that the best course of action was to first see if their experiments were safe for human skin before they began testing anything on themselves. 

They watched with bated breath as Draco dripped the potion onto one of the squares of skin. Their previous trials had resulted in everything from severe charring to a rash of bright purple spots, and even their best attempt had still caused a mild outbreak of boils, so it was impossible to expect too much. And yet every time, Draco couldn’t help but hope. With the addition of the Mandrake root, maybe…

But as it absorbed, everywhere that the potion touched turned red and scaly, like a bad sunburn. Draco made a noise of frustration. He had been so sure that he was on the right track this time. 

“It’s not the worst reaction.” 

Draco looked up. Potter’s expression was thoughtful as he examined the patch of skin. 

“It might even be our best so far.” The cheerfulness in Potter’s tone was baffling. If the potion reacted that poorly with healthy skin tissue, it had almost no promise on scar tissue, but somehow Potter still seemed to view it as a success. Draco had never allowed himself to indulge in that kind of foolish optimism, and yet somehow, at Potter’s words, he felt his spirits lifting. Relative to their previous tests, Potter did have a point: maybe this attempt wasn’t ideal, but it also wasn’t nearly as bad as many of the others. 

“You know what?” Draco reached for his quill. “I think you might actually be right.” 

Potter grinned. “That does happen, occasionally.” 

Draco managed to hide his smile by leaning over his notes. “Very, very occasionally, I’m sure. Now keep stirring, I don’t think we should start from scratch just yet.”

He was almost finished scribbling down the details of the Mandrake root’s effects when Potter spoke up.

“Hey, Malfoy?” 

Draco flipped back through his journal, searching for the list that he had made last week of possible potion additives. “Yes?” 

“Can I ask you something?” 

“I suppose.”

“Why did you tell McGonagall not to punish that girl that attacked you?”

Draco’s hands stilled. Leave it to Potter to ask the questions he least expected, and least wanted. He knew there was no good reason for him not to answer, but it was a moment before he was able to find the rights words. 

“You weren’t here last year, and I’m not sure how much you know, but things were… pretty bad.” He stared at the scrawl of his own handwriting with unseeing eyes. He could feel Potter watching him, but he didn’t look up. “I don’t think she deserved any punishment, not if she had to live through that already.” 

Draco was too much of a coward to tell Potter the full truth: that it felt like a sick kind of hypocrisy to punish a student for hurting him when he had never been punished for hurting so many of them.

“And it was mostly an accident, anyway,” Draco added with a dismissive shrug. “You heard McGonagall—she just thought she was defending you. As if the Chosen One needs a thirteen-year-old girl to protect him.” 

Potter ignored his poor attempt at humour. “What if it wasn’t an accident?” 

Draco didn’t have to ask what he meant. He had wondered the same thing, after all, about whether defending Potter might have just been a convenient excuse to attack him. It wasn’t as if the students at Hogwarts made it a secret how unwanted he was—how unwanted all the Slytherin eighth years were, but most especially him, the Death Eater who had never paid for his crimes. 

“Then it would have been well deserved, wouldn’t it?” Draco kept his tone light, although it felt like anything but a joke. 

Potter didn’t answer. Unable to handle the weight of the Gryffindor’s stare, Draco pushed himself up from the floor, brushing a few stray bits of Mandrake root off his trousers as he stood. 

“Keep stirring,” he instructed, heading towards the supply cupboard. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, exactly, but it gave him an excuse to escape Potter’s scrutiny, if only for a minute. 

When he returned, Potter was just as Draco had left him, although his gaze was now fixed on the slow swirl of the potion as he stirred. Draco resumed his position on the floor, laying out the variety of potions ingredients they now had at their disposal. Potter’s question had rattled him, but the strong, familiar odour of the supply cupboard—an odd mix of verbena, armadillo bile, and the pungent scent of pickled bat spleens—had helped him refocus. 

“I think we should add Wormwood Essence.” Potter lifted his head. His eyes were glazed, as if Draco had pulled him out of a reverie. “No more than four drops.” 

Draco held out one of the glass bottles that he had taken from the supply cupboard, waiting until Potter took it. 

“Wormwood,” Potter murmured, uncorking the bottle while Draco made a note in his journal. “It’s used in the Draught of Living Death, isn’t it? To reduce the side effects of the asphodel root?” 

When Draco stared, Potter added, “We brewed it, in sixth year. Remember?” 

“I am aware that we brewed it in sixth year,” Draco replied, trying not to gape. “But I was _not_ aware that you ever bothered to remember anything from Potions class.” 

Potter dripped a small amount of the Wormwood Essence into the cauldron. “I remember a few things.” 

Draco squinted. “Wasn’t that also the year that your potions skills underwent a rather miraculous transformation?” 

“Ah, well.” Potter’s expression grew sheepish. “I sort of had some help that year.” 

In the past, Draco supposed that he would have felt a sense of vindication knowing that he had been right all along to suspect Potter’s sixth year potions performance. But now, the whole thing seemed trivial. “I knew you couldn’t have gotten better marks than me without cheating.” Draco shook his head.

“It wasn’t cheating, exactly,” Potter defended. “I had a second-hand textbook that had all kinds of notes written in it, about the ingredients and how to brew the potions and stuff, and it was really helpful. I didn’t know back then, but it was actually Snape’s old book, from when he was a student.” 

This was not the answer Draco had expected. “Your potions skills improved because you had help from Snape’s old textbook?” he scoffed. “Potter, you do realize that you had Snape actually teaching you for five years before that, right?”

“That was different,” Potter muttered. Draco rolled his eyes. 

“If you say so.” He leaned over the potion, expecting to see some effect from the Wormwood Essence, but so far, it looked as if nothing had changed. He frowned and reached for his wand. He had read once that, in rare cases, plant essences had the potential to raise the boiling point of a potion; perhaps that was the problem.

Potter’s eyes followed the movement of his wand as he coaxed the flames beneath the cauldron higher. 

“I didn’t think they were going to let me give it to you that day, you know.” 

Draco froze. He knew immediately which day Potter was referring to. It was the first time that either of them had ever mentioned the trial; Draco had never dared to bring it up. 

“I was carrying it while I waited to be called in. I think they knew it wasn’t mine. They almost stopped me.”

Draco’s fingers tightened reflexively around his wand. “They don’t allow prisoners to use magic.” His mouth felt very dry. “How did you convince them?”

Potter shrugged. “I didn’t do anything, really. They asked if it was mine, I said no. They asked what I planned to do with it, and I said that I just wanted to return it to its owner.” 

“And they just _let_ you?” Draco didn’t even know why he was shocked. Who would have dared to say no to the great Harry Potter’s face, only weeks after he had defeated the Dark Lord and ended what most had believed to be an un-winnable war?

“I told them that you were about to be released, so there shouldn’t be any problem.” 

The heat from the cauldron was beginning to feel suffocating. “You couldn’t have known that.”

“I didn’t, really. I just...” Potter hesitated. “I just knew I wasn’t going to let them take you back to Azkaban. You never should have been there.”

Draco swallowed hard, his voice faltering. “Why?”

“It wasn’t right.” Potter watched the cauldron as he stirred. When he spoke again, his voice was low. “You were sixteen when you took the Mark. Your family was in danger. And He would’ve killed you. You didn’t have a choice.”

Draco struggled to speak. Potter wasn’t wrong, exactly—after all, those were the same excuses that Draco had used time and again to assuage his own guilt. He had never regretted trying to protect his family, and he never would, but he also knew that those justifications were not enough to absolve him for his actions. Underage or not, he’d known full well what it meant when he took the Mark; when he’d sent that necklace and poisoned that mead and raised his wand at Dumbledore. He’d tortured people, no matter how unwillingly. He’d nearly tortured Potter, even. But by the time he opened his mouth to point all of that out, Potter had already started talking again. 

“I remember when I saw you that day.” Draco’s heart stuttered. “You looked...” 

“Pitiful?” Draco’s voice was brittle.

Potter shook his head slightly, a small crease forming between his eyebrows. “Dead.” 

The first time that Draco had looked in a mirror after the battle at Hogwarts had been the day of his trial. He’d returned to the family manor that same night upon his conditional release, exchanging Azkaban for three months of house arrest. Though he had stood in the same bathroom that he’d used since childhood, everything had felt alien to him, from the white marble floors to the serpentine taps of the sink to the gaunt white face reflected in the mirror. Draco remembered looking at that skeletal stranger with the dirty, overgrown hair and the flat grey eyes and wondering how much farther he could whittle himself down before the skin cracked and revealed that he had been hollow all along.

“I thought...” 

Draco snapped back to attention. 

“Thought what?” He held his breath, almost afraid of what Potter was about to say.

“I thought it might’ve been too late.” 

_Too late._ Yes, it had been too late, for so many things. But that had nothing to do with Potter. Draco’s expression hardened. “I don’t need a saviour,” he spat. “I didn’t need one then, either.” 

He met Potter’s gaze with a cold stare. Potter’s jaw tightened. 

“You needed _something_.” His green eyes flashed. “You still barely look yourself.” 

“What is that supposed to mean?” Draco demanded, his rage building. 

Potter had stopped stirring. “When was the last time you ate, Malfoy?” 

Draco couldn’t take it anymore. He got enough of this shit from Pansy. Who did Potter think he was, criticizing Draco for how he was coping? 

“Why don’t you go spend a few weeks in Azkaban and see what it does for your appetite?” With one swift movement, he snatched the stirring rod out of Potter’s slack hand; the potion had begun to froth and was dangerously close to boiling over. “My personal habits are none of your concern,” he snarled. “And in case you haven’t noticed, you look like shit too. When was the last time you slept?” 

He leaned over the cauldron and jabbed angrily at the ruined potion, which was now the colour of charcoal and smelled like spoilt milk. Potter had relinquished the stirring rod without question, but he had not otherwise moved; his expression was distant and unreadable. 

“Back off, Potter,” Draco commanded, shoving at Potter’s bony knee. They were sitting quite close together, having both gravitated toward the cauldron as they worked. Although it hadn’t bothered Draco until then, he now found everything about Potter’s presence a source of irritation. 

“Why don’t you back off?” Potter retorted, seeming to come back to himself. He reached as if to grab the stirring rod, but Draco smacked his hand away. 

“I’m not the one who ruined the potion, you moron.” 

“I only stopped stirring for five seconds!” Potter reached for the stirring rod again. This time, Draco pulled it from the cauldron and held it behind his back, out of Potter’s reach. It was childish, he knew, but in that moment, Draco didn’t care. All he cared about was not letting Potter win whatever fight it was they were having. 

“It doesn’t matter if it was five seconds or five hours, the potion is still ruined!” 

Anger twisted on Potter’s face and Draco was satisfied to see that it matched his own. This was the way their relationship should be, the way it had always been: hostile, vindictive, simple. Much simpler than having to think about the pressure of his lips, or the movement of his body, or the cruel tease of forgiveness that his friendship offered. 

Potter lunged forward, stretching to try and grab the stirring rod that Draco had hidden behind his back. As he moved, his knee collided with the side of the cauldron, and Draco watched as if in slow motion as it wobbled and then tipped over, spilling the potion across his legs. He yelped and scrambled backwards, trying to avoid the worst of it, but it was too late: the potion was everywhere, scalding his skin as it soaked through his socks and trousers. 

Potter swore and scrambled for his wand, careful to avoid touching any of the spilled liquid as he quickly vanished the potion and came to kneel at Draco’s side, his face lined with worry.

“I’m so sorry, Malfoy, I didn’t mean to…” 

Draco winced as he rolled up the leg of his trousers. The skin underneath was raw and red, and it was beginning to blister in places. Draco had expected as much; the potion had been just below boiling when it spilled. But as he looked closer, any thought to the pain disappeared. 

Across all of their experiments, every single potion that they had tested without exception had produced some sort of undesirable side effect, ranging from bizarre to deadly. But this potion had done nothing. Ugly and foul-smelling though it was, aside from some superficial burns, Draco’s legs were perfectly fine. 

“Potter.” He looked over at the dark-haired boy, whose brow was furrowed as he stared down at Draco’s leg. “You are the luckiest fucking idiot I have ever met.”


End file.
